The Patent Number And The Record
U.S. Patent No. 2,550,554 is the formal record of Bessie Blount’s invention — the legal document that places her name and her work in the official archive of American invention.
The patent is searchable through Google Patents and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office database. The filing is available to anyone who wants to read the original technical documentation.
The patent is filed under the name Bessie Griffin — her married name — rather than Bessie Blount. This is a practical biographical complication: many sources refer to her as Bessie Blount, using the name she appears to have used professionally, while the patent record uses her legal married name. Researchers tracing her patent history need to know both names.
The device described in the 1951 patent is specifically the “portable receptacle support” — the neck brace design that holds containers near the mouth. This is the simpler, more portable version of her original electronic device.
The electronic device — the tube-and-mouthpiece mechanism — may have been covered by a separate earlier patent (some sources reference a 1948 patent for “part of the device”) or may not have been separately patented. The historical record is slightly inconsistent on this point.
What is clear is that she sought and received patent protection for her portable device, demonstrating a systematic understanding of intellectual property protection that goes beyond simple invention.
The VA’s rejection of a patented device — a device that had gone through the formal process of patent examination and been granted intellectual property protection by the U.S. government — is particularly notable. The patent system’s recognition of the device’s novelty and validity did not translate into the VA’s institutional willingness to adopt it.