Surely you must add this to the "Handsome Rakes" gallery.

Can you imagine if those sprinklers ever went off just above the shelves? Patent Mush!

Farked again!

http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4569861

The guy on the left SCREAMS Asperger's syndrome. The guy on the right just screams.

My entire post about "leaving the boys alone" was tongue in cheek. Especially the part about colorization, that was a poke at the anti-colorizing crowd. (Friends always tell me my sense of humor is too dry. Cough. Cough.)

Personally, I'd like to think that 100 years from now, someone, perhaps in the holographic 21st century version of Shorpy, sees my photo and thinks "wow, what a hottie!"

Oh, Anonymous Tipster, do you really want to go there? Really? Have you happened to read some of the comments directed toward the women that appear on Shorpy? Or do those not bother you?

My mother was a technical translator (seven or eight languages into English) in the Patent Office Library in the 1920s. She said her desk was near a window and staircase in the stacks. I managed to talk my way into that area at least a decade ago and think I found the location.

Looks like the twin brother of Orlando Bloom from "Lord of the Ring" movie

How many nearsighted patent clerks took a header over the railing?

Why does every photograph have to get comments about the physique of the man, or how dorky he looks, or how handsome/hunky/plain he is?

I almost hate to read the comments when men are in the photographs!

On a separate note, I love the colorized version "Patents to Portraits"!

["Colorized version"?? It's a photo taken in 2006. - Dave]

Of course all these patents are now online at Google, including my grandfather's patents for a "sanitary stool seat cover" from 1921.

look like something wild animals have been chewing on. But it all fades into nothingness when I look at the simply gorgeous face of Guy on Right. Woof.

Ooh, the guy on the right is like the James Dean of patents.

Also, I love the architecture, especially the glass ceiling and the little balconies that let you go around the support columns.

Me-yow! Why wasn't I in the U.S. Patent Office on July 16, 1925? The Handsome Buddy looks to be a little young for me, but he would have been right up my alley 10 or 15 years ago. I love that steely stare. Feminine gushing aside, what's happening with the Ultimate Patent Geek's trousers? Has he hidden away secret patent information in his pockets? I wonder if he's trying to patent that makeshift wire belt (?) he's using to hold up his lumpy slacks.

The digs may have changed, but the employees still look the same: geeky and rumpled, with a cute one thrown in here and there for good measure.

Down below, a clerk confronts a destructive poltergeist that has emptied the contents of a shelf upon the floor.

"Let's have none of that now! Put it back!"

The Old Patent Office building now houses the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum.

This reminds me of the final scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

The clerk in the foreground is EXACTLY how the Ultimate Patent Geek should look! Glasses, hair, rumpled shirt, notepad, "almost remembers" where every application got filed for the last five years, hopes his handsome buddy is lining them up with dates for the weekend.