Patent number sequencing/ what was the firsts ever U.S. patent?

Question

Google tells me that they have a feature where if you type patent followed by an appropriate number they'll tell you what it is. Asside from why in fact this feature doesn't appear to work, my question is, how is the sequencing of patent numbers generated. Google's example is Patent 5123123 which is a legitemate number, I assume these are numbers for the U.S. patent office. I tried a few random numbers of the same number of digits and found nothing and then tried "1" and there doesn't appear to be a first ever patent at least not sequentially.

Answer 1

Einstein worked at the patent office for awhile.  If he were alive maybe he could figure it out.

Answer 2

Try typing "patent 0000001" and you'll see it works fine. U.S. Patents are issued every Tuesday, using sequential numbers.

The first U.S. patent was issued the same year the 1790 Patent Act was enacted.

Answer 3

the highest US patent number so far starts with a 7, so if you tried numbers in the 8 or 9 million range, that might be why it didnt work.  

And, while their database isnt perfect, especially with the ancient patents, googles patent search page is actually very good.

To get there click on more on the regular google page, then even more, then scroll down for patents.