Onesimus's source, the land's metal joining, and when patents started

SUMMARYOnesimus's source, the land's metal joining, and when patents started (Nov 6, 2026). ONESIMUS, Record: Cotton Mather wrote (to the Royal Society, 1716) that Onesimus "had undergone an operation, which had given him something of the small-pox and would forever preserve him from it, adding that it was often used among the Guramantese" (Coromantee, Gold Coast). Tito asked whether it came from the Americas. Date test (named): smallpox wasn't in the Americas until 1518 (P768), so the method's homeland in the record is the Gold Coast. The Americas origin stays OPEN only if a pre-1518 smallpox source turns up. METALS, Record: Andean goldsmiths joined metal sheets into large objects (1000–200 BCE). La Tolita and Esmeraldas (Ecuador, 600 BCE–200 CE) worked platinum, the earliest platinum working in the world, by sintering platinum grains with gold, the earliest known powder metallurgy. The Spanish noticed and adopted the technique around 1730; Europe could not melt platinum until the late 1700s. Moche smelting and arsenical bronze (200 BCE–600 CE). Tiwanaku copper alloys with arsenic and nickel (600–1000 CE) and cast-in-place clamps (oldtech). West Mexican tin-rich bronze bells (from 1200 CE). Nahuange depletion gilding, rose gold (100–700 CE). Tumbaga (copper-gold). Lake Superior copper pits about 8,000 years old. Pattern: the land had a full metal age, with alloys, gilding, soldering and powder metallurgy, and Europe copied the platinum method. Tito lens: welding: soldering and sintering are on the record; true fusion welding needs a study (OPEN). PATENTS, Record: Venice (1474) first general patent law; England's Statute of Monopolies (1624); Massachusetts' first colonial patent to Samuel Winslow for salt-making (1641); first US patent to Samuel Hopkins, potash (July 31, 1790). Patents weren't numbered until 1836 (No. 1 on July 13, 1836). The Patent Office fire (Dec 15, 1836) destroyed about 9,957 early patents; about 2,800 recovered. Held people were barred from patents (1858, P759). Pattern (Tito, backed): the patent system created the paper start of "invention." A "first patent" is the first registration, not the first maker; the 1836 fire erased much of the early record, and the people papered as Black were shut out until 1865.