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 “Sturtevant’s Patent Model of a Heating and Ventilating Apparatus – ca 1870” — 40 records examined, 3 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-05 15:32 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.
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
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
Gold and Foskett's Patent Model of a Steam Heating Apparatus - ca 1862

Gold and Foskett's Patent Model of a Steam Heating Apparatus - ca 1862

Artist not stated in the record · ca 1862

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
White’s Patent Model of a Hot-Air Furnace - ca 1872

White’s Patent Model of a Hot-Air Furnace - ca 1872

Artist not stated in the record · ca 1872

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
McAvoy’s Patent Model of a Heat Regulator for Hot Water Apparatus - ca 1869

McAvoy’s Patent Model of a Heat Regulator for Hot Water Apparatus - ca 1869

Artist not stated in the record · 1869-07-27

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Patent Model of a Sheet-feed Apparatus, by Ashley, John T.

Patent Model of a Sheet-feed Apparatus

Ashley, John T. · ca 1870

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Vera’s Patent Model of a Friction Heater – ca 1869

Vera’s Patent Model of a Friction Heater – ca 1869

Artist not stated in the record · 1869-01-19

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Patent Model of a Sheet Perfecting Flatbed Cylinder Press, by Kerr, William A.

Patent Model of a Sheet Perfecting Flatbed Cylinder Press

Kerr, William A. · ca 1870

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Patent model for feeding apparatus for cylinder presses, by unknown

Patent model for feeding apparatus for cylinder presses

unknown · ca 1870

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Patent Model of a Pneumatic Sheet-Feed Apparatus

Patent Model of a Pneumatic Sheet-Feed Apparatus

Artist not stated in the record · ca 1870

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Lawler's Patent Model of a Hot Water Heater - 1877

Lawler's Patent Model of a Hot Water Heater - 1877

Artist not stated in the record · 1877-04-10

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Patent Model of a Rotary Printing Press for Printing or Branding Wooden Box Covers, by Hainque, Martial

Patent Model of a Rotary Printing Press for Printing or Branding Wooden Box Covers

Hainque, Martial · ca 1877

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. 72 matched · 40 examined · 3 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 15:32 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.