By BRIAN X. CHEN

The United States Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, Va., recently unveiled an exhibit of 30 giant iPhone-like models honoring the inventions of the late Steve Jobs.

Each iPhone model displays patents that list Mr. Jobs as inventor or co-inventor. Altogether about 300 patents are on display, giving exhibit attendees a visual tour through Apple’s history of design and innovation.

“It’s interesting to see a lot of the shapes and figures that people are so familiar with now on a patent application,” said Rini Paiva, executive director at the National Inventors Hall of Fame and Museum, the division of the patent office that created the exhibit.

Patents on technological devices do not always result in real products that hit the consumer market, but they document an inventor’s research and methodology in different areas of design and engineering. Often, multiple patented technologies come together to form one real product, like the iPad.

Many have viewed Mr. Jobs’s key role at Apple as that of business negotiator, but according to the patent records, he was quite the prolific inventor. Patents that list Mr. Jobs as an inventor or co-inventor include the design of a touch tablet computer (which we now call the iPad), Apple’s iconic power “brick” used to charge notebooks, and the desk-lamplike iMac made in 2002.

The patent exhibit is free and open to the public until Jan. 15.