Back in the 1960’s, the NY Times business section had a column on interesting patents.  I think it was in the Friday edition, as the patents were published on Tuesday. The column always gave the address of the U.S. Government Printing Office so you could order a copy, I think for 25 cents. 

I think the patents were printed on one side of the page, and Dad took a perverse pleasure in ordering very long patent publications because the paper was good quality and he good use the back side.

As I recall, there was a patent on the IBM System/360 that ran to around a thousand pages, and he let his kids use it for drawing paper.  I have been trying to find the patent number to confirm my memory, but I haven’t found a way to sort the patent database by page count.

In going through Dad’s papers one last time before shredding them, I did come across a 1961 letter from the patent office refunding his remittance for patent number 2,925,957 “Accounting System” because it was out of print and there was no plan to reprint the 620 pages of text and drawings.