These young men are patent clerks.

They were photographed in 1924 on the third floor of the Patent Office Building on F Street in Washington, D.C., in a room often called “the model room.”

The Patent Office Building was then almost one hundred years old; and it had been the place where much of the American story had unfolded.

Initially, the building housed inventors’ patent applications and scale models of their inventions, which were displayed for the public in glass-fronted cabinets.

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