Who received the first U.S. patent (No. 1) under the 1836 system?

John Ruggles received the first U.S. patent numbered No. 1 under the patent system established in 1836.

Ruggles’s patent, issued on July 13, 1836, covered traction wheels designed to help trains travel uphill while hauling heavy loads. He was not merely a patent recipient: as a U.S. senator from Maine, he chaired the Senate committee concerned with patents and helped frame the 1836 legislation that reorganized the Patent Office.

The numbering history can be confusing. A fire at the Patent Office destroyed many earlier records in 1836, so surviving pre-fire patents were later known as “X-patents.” Samuel Hopkins held the first of those earlier patents, but he did not receive modern Patent No. 1.

Ruggles therefore holds a specific historical distinction: he received the first patent in the new sequential numbering system. The achievement is unrelated to famous inventors such as Samuel Morse, Abraham Lincoln, or Thomas Edison.