Talk:Isaac Keesing

Although according to the Wikipedia article, he obtained two patents, being an inventor does not seem to have ever been his primary occupation, at least for any significant period of time, and the article does not seem to describe his patent(s) as being especially notable. It just says that such patent(s) existed. For example, it does not seem to say that anyone extensively used his invention(s) or that they were influential in the development of other inventions. It only says he obtained two patents, not that the inventions or the associated patents were important (or even actually practical or useful). I suggest we consider changing the opening sentence to remove "inventor" from the opening sentence that describes who he was. That does not seem to have been a significant part of his notability.

On the other hand, after writing the above comment, I noticed that there seems to be a company that attributes some of its heritage to his enterprises and his inventiveness.

The second patent described in the Wikipedia article is asserted to be for "a card index system". Two sources are cited to support that statement – both of which are published by companies that trace their heritage to Isaac Keesing, so neither of them should be considered fully independent and thus reliable for information about him. But a bigger problem is that I cannot find such a patent described in either one of those sources.

All of what I am discussing seems to have been in the first draft created for this article by Ghmyrtle. I plan to edit the article content relating to this.

—⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:56, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know about this. I don't have access to any sources, other than those I used at the time of starting this article, so I'd welcome any improvements and corrections you can make to the article - and I apologise if I inadvertently misrepresented any of the sources. Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:18, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

No worries. Thanks for getting an interesting article started. Also, contrary to what the article seems to say, his patent for an improved method of sealing letters did use sealing wax in a conventional way. It just described a way of heating the sealing wax more safely and with less smell. It involved some sort of box with a spout used to heat the wax in a different way than what was traditionally done. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 21:30, 8 March 2026 (UTC)