;Who was it that wanted to close the Patent Office about a hundred years ago because "everything had been invented?" '
No one- it is another urban legend...
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_3_27/ai_100755224
It is rare that we feel moved to republish an earlier SKEPTICAL INQUIRER article. But the myth that a patent commissioner once resigned because "everything that can he invented has been invented" keeps being uncritically repeated in prominent news outlets. So we thought it would he interesting and useful to reprint Samuel Sass's brief article investigating that claim, "A Patently False Patent Myth," from our Spring 1989 issue.
...
(snip)
...
Jeffery found no evidence that any official or employee of the U.S. Patent Office had ever resigned because he thought there was nothing left to invent. However, Jeffery may have found a clue to the origin of the myth. In his 1843 report to Congress, the then-commissioner of the Patent Office, Henry L. Ellsworth, included the following comment: "The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end." As Jeffery shows, it's evident from the rest of that report that Commissioner Ellsworth was simply using a bit of rhetorical flourish to emphasize that the number of patents was growing at a great rate. Far from considering inventions at an end, he outlined areas in which he expected patent activity to increase, and it is clear that he was making plans for the future.