If you have any questions or comments on the concepts covered in US Patent #5,285,711, I'd be very interested in hearing them. Please use the "mailto:" link on my home page.

Here's the best link I've found so far for looking up patents by number, the "US Patent Full-Text Database Number Search."

From the US Patent and Trademark Office Home Page, here's Dr Sanderson's patent: United States Patent: 5,285,711. It's in HTML text form.

[ Note: I'd originally typed in this whole patent by hand (very nicely!), but when it became available online, I replaced it with this link. Now I can't find a copy of my original, and I've just noticed that the very heart of the patent -- the equations -- are represented by things like "##EQU1##," and that some of the symbols (".ltoreq." represents the "less than or equal to" symbol) are quite puzzling. Until I get these problems taken care of, I hope the IBM links below will suffice. ]

The following two links are from the IBM Intellectual Property Server, and present images of Dr Sanderson's patent, the only difference being that the format of the second link is more modern: Method and apparatus for tuning musical instruments (5285711) Method and apparatus for tuning musical instruments (US5285711). Though this is a commercial site, these documents have the advantage of including many useful links, such as ones to classes, inventors, referenced patents, etc.

Here's the biographical page of Jeffrey R. Kuester, a patent lawyer who contributes articles on Internet issues to The New York Times. He and I would both like to know whether patents are protected by copyright.

Another piano tuning machine: US Patent 5,756,913. (Also note the URL.)