William H. Doolittle

William H. Doolittle was an American patent expert of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He worked as an examiner in the United States Patent Office and rose to assistant commissioner of patents in Washington, later practicing as a patent solicitor. Drawing on this experience, he wrote Inventions in the Century, published in 1903 in the Nineteenth Century Series, a broad survey of the inventions that transformed agriculture, industry, transport and daily life during the 1800s.