Page:Life in a thousand worlds.djvu/237

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232
LIFE IN A THOUSAND WORLDS.

The Reward of Inventors.

Patents are not issued in Ploid. The government gives liberal rewards to each inventor or discoverer. The applicant appears personally before the District Committee on Inventions. If this Committee considers the invention worthy of a reward, the applicant is recommended to one of the Central Committees at the seat of the government.

This Central Committee carefully considers the invention or discovery, places on it an estimate as to its local or governmental value, and fills out papers in accordance with its findings. This paper must be signed by the Chief Inventor, and the applicant at once receives his first installment which is continued, in some instances, during natural life. In the case of some extraordinary invention, the immediate relatives of the inventor are pensioned for five or ten years in his honor.

Naturally, under this system, the government owns all inventions, and reaps a heavy return from them, enough to pay all the installments to the inventors and the officers employed to carry on this branch of the government work.