OpenGlyph — Catalogue of the American Public DomainJurisdiction: United StatesRev. 2026.08
Images / art

Two archives, queried live.

Every record below comes from The Met or Smithsonian Open Access and was filtered on that archive’s own rights field before it reached this page. 12 shown for “Fowler’s Patent Model of a Furnace Steam Boiler - ca 1856” — 40 records examined, 22 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-05 18:58 UTC · fetched live for this request

Object
Public domainThe Met’s isPublicDomain field is true for this object.
CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian’s metadata_usage.access reads CC0 — a waiver, not an expired term.
Not shownAnything failing its archive’s rights field is dropped server-side and never appears here.
Fowler’s Patent Model of a Furnace Steam Boiler - ca 1856

Fowler’s Patent Model of a Furnace Steam Boiler - ca 1856

Artist not stated in the record · ca 1856

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Holley’s Patent Model of a Steam-Boiler Furnace – 1880

Holley’s Patent Model of a Steam-Boiler Furnace – 1880

Artist not stated in the record · ca 1880

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Ritty Steam Boiler, Patent Model

Ritty Steam Boiler, Patent Model

Artist not stated in the record · 1873

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Wiegand Steam Boiler, Patent Model

Wiegand Steam Boiler, Patent Model

Artist not stated in the record · 1867

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Luders Steam Boiler, Patent Model

Luders Steam Boiler, Patent Model

Artist not stated in the record · 1869

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Sturtevant’s Patent Model of a Hot Air Furnace - ca 1869

Sturtevant’s Patent Model of a Hot Air Furnace - ca 1869

Artist not stated in the record · ca 1869

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Sturtevant’s Patent Model of a Heating and Ventilating Apparatus – ca 1870

Sturtevant’s Patent Model of a Heating and Ventilating Apparatus – ca 1870

Artist not stated in the record · ca 1870

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Corliss Marine-Boiler Improvements, Patent Model

Corliss Marine-Boiler Improvements, Patent Model

Artist not stated in the record · 1862

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Frick Feed-Water Apparatus, Patent Model

Frick Feed-Water Apparatus, Patent Model

Artist not stated in the record · 1858

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Corliss Water-Tube Boiler, Patent Model

Corliss Water-Tube Boiler, Patent Model

Artist not stated in the record · 1879

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Trowbridge Steam Generator, Patent Model

Trowbridge Steam Generator, Patent Model

Artist not stated in the record · 1876

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Roebling Safety Steam Gauge, Patent Model

Roebling Safety Steam Gauge, Patent Model

Artist not stated in the record · 1842

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
What was queried

Where these records came from.

Two archives are wired, and only two. Each one is filtered on its own rights field — never on a title match, and never on the presence of an image file.

  • The Met Collection API (Open Access)Rights field: isPublicDomain. The archive returned no records for this term.0 matched
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 3886984 matched · 40 examined · 22 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where metadata_usage.access === "CC0" and an image resource was published.12 shown

These figures describe the pass run at 2026-09-05 18:58 UTC, during this request. A completed pass is kept for 24 hours and replayed for an identical search, which is what keeps repeated queries inside Smithsonian’s 30-requests-per-hour allowance. A pass in which either archive failed to answer is never kept — an outage must not be replayed as though it were a finding about the catalogue.

Wikimedia Commons and the Library of Congress are deliberately not wired. Wikimedia was confirmed, on a live query, to return CC-BY material inside the same result set as genuine public domain works, and filtering it safely has not been designed yet. loc.gov was blocked by bot detection during the source evaluation, so its rights vocabulary has never been observed — and nothing here is built on a field nobody has read.

An image file is a rights claim. It never travels without its field.