File this one under the category of "missed opportunities" . Here is an interesting old patent about palladium metallurgy - and how to treat the metal in order to maximize hydrogen absorption and catalytic activity. This patent does not turn up in a search of the LENR-CANR library nor does its inventor Streicher. Process of treating palladium US 2139529 - Johann Streicher, Newark, N. J., assigner to The American Platinum Works, Newark, N. J. Filed 1934 and granted in 1938.
The goal of the patent appears to be maximizing the catalytic power of palladium. The patent does not mention cold fusion - nor does it mention Paneth and Peters, nor Tandberg (from Sweden) nor helium, nor excess heat. However, the patent text has several interesting factoids which can hint at why some LENR experimenters could have failed to get positive results. It does mention that palladium undergoes a significant morphology change under specific circumstances and thermal cycling. Side note: one historian (name forgotten) has claimed that Tandberg reputedly got unpublished results in Sweden, years later after deuterium became available from Norway, which were said to be actual proof of cold fusion, but no one would believe him - following the earlier retraction by Paneth and Peters. Anyway, this inventor - Streicher - apparently recognized that a unique morphology will happen to palladium after about 50 to 60 cycles of full hydrogen absorption, but COLD absorption, followed by full desorption of hydrogen under heat. This is time consuming and tedious ! How many early CF researchers attained this favored morphology? It could require one or two months of preparation to do properly since the inventor presumably takes the palladium below freezing temperatures every time - requiring active refrigeration (or wintertime) - which makes the date of the invention important in the context of refrigeration. It has been said that activated CF electrodes can require as much as 10^6 seconds of run time, so presumably it has been understood that a version of this morphology-change phenomenon takes considerable time without thermal cycling - which probably involves creating nanostructure. This makes the "codep" technique all the more important in time saving - but very likely is the possibility that codep itself could be improved with cold/hot cycling and active freeze-loading - since codep alone does not guarantee anything other than high loading done quickly. The inventor calls the activated palladium: "pseudomorphic palladium" having spherical bodies obtained by the repeated sorption with hydrogen such that the material becomes pyrophoric when the treatment is completed. Pyrophoricity is usually a function of nanostructure with catalysts. Given that one specialty use of palladium in this era was for hydrogen cigarette lighters (the Dobereiner Cigarette Lighter made famous by Dunhill) and given that the patent mentions that untreated palladium will not self-ignite hydrogen, but that the treated Pd becomes pyrophoric, then this is a clue as to how chemical catalysis depends on morphology (which may play a part in CANR). Had they understood the terminology back then - this is probably "nanotechnology" in an early form. The important parameter in LENR for loading in the palladium matrix could shift from simply "loading %" to "loading% into a fully developed nanostructure". It is a subtle distinction. It is sad to imagine that better results could have been had 25 years ago, had freeze-loading and hot desorption, for a minimum of 50 cycles, been known and implemented (assuming that it works better - and there is no real proof of that, so this falls into the category of "alternative history").
