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Reputed inventions

Carver has been given credit in popular folklore for many inventions that did not come out of his lab. Three patents (one for cosmetics; , and two for paints and stains; , and) were issued to Carver in 1925 to 1927; however, they were not commercially successful.

Aside from these patents and some recipes for food, Carver left no records of formulae or procedures for making his products. He did not keep a laboratory notebook.Mackintosh notes that, "Carver did not explicitly claim that he had personally discovered all the peanut attributes and uses he cited, but he said nothing to prevent his audiences from drawing the inference."

Carver's research was intended to produce replacements from common crops for commercial products, which were generally beyond the budget of the small one-horse farmer. A misconception grew that his research on products for subsistence farmers were developed by others commercially to change Southern agriculture. Carver's work to provide small farmers with resources for more independence from the cash economy foreshadowed the " appropriate technology " work of E. F. Schumacher.