How Xerox Helped Win the Cold War

> Mr. Zoppoth designed what he called a ‘slit camera’ and received a secret US patent on it.

A "secret US patent"???

The idea behind the patent system (whether or not you think it works well) is for the government to grant a limited-time monopoly in exchange for publicizing an idea. A "secret patent" defeats the whole purpose.

Secondly, how would anyone determine whether they were infringing such a patent? How could it be enforced?

And finally, if an idea is to remain secret for a time, then, even if the patent can somehow be kept secret, why would you patent it at all? That starts a clock ticking toward the expiration of the patent. You would want to start that clock as late as possible, I would think. Why not wait until the idea is publicized?

To paraphrase Lenin, "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang ourselves."

For "Everything the Soviet embassy staff routinely copied on their new photocopier was of vital intelligence value to the United States." read "The CIA wanted everything the staff copied." No doubt prodigies of inference can be achieved from routine data, but you can bet that there were a lot of expense reports and dinner menus copied.

Was a Xerox machine really so inscrutable that they couldn't have a Soviet engineer take the thing apart and reverse engineer it? I can't imagine being dependent upon enemy citizens having unrestricted access to equipment you don't understand in your own embassy.