Electrify your office or home with our fun Nikola Tesla Bobblehead. The likeness of the celebrated Serbian-American electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist makes a terrific gift for science enthusiasts and those with curiosity. 

Filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office November 30, 1887 Nikola Tesla's 1887 electro magnetic motor patent feature the notes, "Be it known that I, NIKOLA TESLA, a subject of the Emperor of Austria . . . now residing at New York, in the county and State of New York, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Electro Magnetic Motors, of which the following is a specification, reference being to the drawings accompanying and forming a part of the same. . . . I accomplish this by constructing a motor with two or more independent energizing-circuits, on the field magnets . . . so that alternating currents are caused to traverse the motor circuits. By so doing the poles of the field-magnet of the motor are progressively shifted, and by their attraction upon a rotary armature set up a rotation in the latter in the direction of the movement of the poles."--Nikola Tesla. Filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office November 30, 1887.

The patent act of 1790 established the rules for submitting a patent application. Each application had to be submitted with specifications, a patent drawing, and if possible a model of the invention. Eventually, models were no longer required.

The National Archives holds nearly three million patent case files from 1836-1956.