{"id":10234,"date":"2009-02-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-04T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/the-inventor-president"},"modified":"2021-01-29T17:47:35","modified_gmt":"2021-01-29T22:47:35","slug":"the-inventor-president","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/the-inventor-president","title":{"rendered":"The Inventor President"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Only one President of the United States ever patented an invention. That was Abraham Lincoln, whose bicentennial we celebrate on February 12, 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a young man, Lincoln had spent some time on riverboats, transporting farm produce and other cargo down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. In 1848, then-Congressman Lincoln was a passenger on a boat in shallow Illinois waters when a passing boat ran into a sandbar. He watched as the captain ordered his crew to place anything that would float \u2014 especially empty barrels and boxes \u2014 under the sides of the boat for buoyancy. That incident was the direct inspiration for Lincoln\u2019s invention: \u201cbuoyant air chambers\u201d made of \u201cwater-proof fabric\u201d; they could be inflated and deflated as needed to help keep a boat afloat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He obtained a patent for this invention, \u201cBuoying Vessels Over Shoals<\/a>,\u201d in 1849. A decade later, on the lecture circuit, he described the first English patent laws as one of the three greatest \u201cinventions and discoveries\u201d in history (along with the written and printed word and the discovery of America), for their addition of \u201cthe fuel of interest<\/em> to the fire<\/em> of genius in the discovery and production of new and useful things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\r\n
\r\n \r\n
\r\n \r\n \r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/figure>\r\n \r\n
\r\n \r\n Lincoln the Inventor <\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n \r\n
\r\n James Emerson <\/div>\r\n \r\n
\r\n Southern Illinois University Press
2009 ~ 112 pp.
$12.95 (paper) <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

Like many of his other endeavors, however, Lincoln\u2019s foray into engineering was a failure. As far as we know, his invention was never built and the patent never brought him a cent. Even his \u201cDiscoveries and Inventions<\/a>\u201d speech was a flop: his law partner William Herndon remarked that \u201cthis last effort demonstrated that he was no lecturer.\u201d It certainly had its choice silly moments \u2014 in comparing young American entrepreneurs to the original Adam, Lincoln sorrowfully observed how narrow was the scope of the father of mankind\u2019s life because \u201cno part of his breakfast had been brought from the other side of the world.\u201d Continuing his Edenic reflections, he envisioned Eve constructing an apron of fig leaves with Adam standing by to thread the needle: \u201cThat proceeding may be reckoned as the mother of all \u201bSewing societies\u2019; and the first and most perfect \u201bworld\u2019s fair\u2019 all inventions and all inventors then in the world, being on the spot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More seriously, however, Lincoln selected writing \u2014 \u201cthe art of communicating thoughts to the mind, through the eye\u201d \u2014 as \u201cthe great invention of the world…great, very great in enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space.\u201d We can all be grateful for our penned communion with Lincoln himself. His writings and speeches \u2014 eloquent, graceful, powerful, and witty \u2014 are a window on a great soul \u2014 a man of assorted failures and misadventures who saved the nation in her hour of crisis, extended freedom, and paid with his life. For his words, for his wisdom, and for his work of securing the union, we honor and remember him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Only one President of the United States ever patented an invention. That was Abraham Lincoln, whose bicentennial we celebrate on February 12, 2009. As a young man, Lincoln had spent some time on riverboats, transporting farm produce and other cargo down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. In 1848, then-Congressman Lincoln was a passenger on a boat in shallow Illinois waters when a passing boat ran into a sandbar. He watched as the captain ordered his crew to place anything that would float \u2014 especially empty barrels and boxes \u2014 under the sides of the boat for buoyancy. That incident…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"template":"","article_type":[4646],"noteworthy_people":[],"topics":[5004,5046],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/10234"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/10234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21343,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/10234\/revisions\/21343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_type?post=10234"},{"taxonomy":"noteworthy_people","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/noteworthy_people?post=10234"},{"taxonomy":"topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topics?post=10234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}