Originally enforced by a commission including Thomas Jefferson, the Patent Act of 1790 required that anyone applying to the U.S. Patent Office submit a working model of the invention. Over 200,000 models were submitted during the next 90 years, but after two fires and a growing lack of space, the model requirement was abolished in 1880.

Congress sent some models to the Smithsonian Institution, but the bulk was sold at auction in 1925. The winning bidder was Sir Henry Wellcome, founder of what is now the Glaxo-Wellcome pharmaceutical company. After Wellcome's death, the collection was broken up and thousands of models were sold off by a succession of private owners.

Alan Rothschild acquired the remainder of the original collection in the 1990s from Cliff Petersen, and established the Rothschild Petersen Patent Model Museum in 1998. Since then, Mr. Rothschild has added to the Museum with purchases of smaller patent model collections from around the United States, including the purchase of all 82 models in Carolyn Pollan's Patent Model Museum in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

The Rothschild Petersen Patent Model Museum contains nearly 4,000 patent models and related documents. Due to limited space, only a fraction of the models are on display. Alan Rothschild hopes to establish a national Patent Model Museum. See the "Vision for the Future" section for more details.