| I was a USPTO patent examiner twice before. The job today is not as you describe, and I doubt it was as you describe in Einstein's day either. By Einstein's own words, being a patent examiner was a lot of work [1, pp. 102--103]: > he complained about the workload: "I have a frightful lot of work. Eight hours at the office each day and at least one private lesson, and then I have my scientific work." [26] Once he had settled in, though, he found his forty-eight hours per week at the office tolerable. When his friend Habicht was not entirely satisfied with the school service, in which he had landed after completing his studies, Einstein suggested that one day he would smuggle Habicht in among the "patent slaves" and tried to commend the work to him by observing that "along with the eight hours of work there are also eight hours of fun in the day, and then there is also Sunday." [27] As a former patent examiner, I know precisely what he meant when he described himself as a "patent slave". I basically had a quota to meet, and it was quite challenging to do and meet any reasonable quality standard. You can find sources like [2, p. 4] that indicate he did do some research at the Swiss patent office, but it's a secondary source: > Rudolf Kayser, Einstein's son-in-law writes in his biography on Einstein, "He soon discovered that he could find time to devote to his own scientific studies if he did his work in less time. But discretion was necessary, for though authorities may find slow work satisfactory, the saving of time for personal pursuits is officially forbidden. Worried, Einstein saw to it that the small sheets of paper on which he wrote and figured vanished into his desk-drawer as soon as he heard footsteps approaching behind his door. I don't doubt that he did some research there, but it probably wasn't much judging by Einstein's own words and my own time as a patent examiner over 100 years later. [1] A. Fölsing, Albert Einstein: a biography. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Viking, 1997. [2] https://arxiv.org/abs/1205.3904 |