During the Great Depression, the increasing dominance of big business over the U.S. patent system attracted attention and controversy, culminating in a congressional investigation of the issue: Had corporations co-opted the patent system to form monopolies, stifle competition, and constrict industries? In response, big business and the U.S. Patent Office used celebrations of the history of the patent system as key opportunities for presenting a more positive counternarrative to the US-American public. The first such opportunity was the hundredth anniversary of the Patent Act of 1836. In the 1936 commemoration, Patent Office officials and patent system stakeholders exploited the figure of the lone inventor, a trope used to help the public associate the patent system with the creative genius of the individual patentee rather than with the monopolistic practices of big business. This essay, a narratological study of the celebratory proceedings in 1936, explains how and why officials embarked on this exercise in peacetime propaganda, even as it ended up contradicting the priorities of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.