JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

Posts to this blog have recently been clustered around volumes of the Journal of the Franklin Institute, as that is what I have been working with quite a bit over on the other side of this site dedicated to online book selling. Bits and pieces have struck me as interesting and curious and worth sharing–I’ve found often that many of these short pieces have received scant attention in the online world. Today’s adventure into the journal led to something that is well-known, but I’m sharing it anyway because it was such a surprise to come upon it “naturally” in the course of looking through one of the JFI volumes.

I knew that Abraham Lincoln was the only U.S. president to receive a patent, and thought that it might show up in these volumes sooner or later, and while looking at the year 1850 I found it: #71 in the review of American Patents for January of that year. In the two open pages of that volume the Lincoln contribution settled in with seven other patents (granted to inventors from New York (2), Ohio (2), Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire). Lincoln’s boat-lifter was there with a new method for joining staves, imitating marble, a spring saddle, improvements to scythe nibs, nozzles for ship navigation, and a shank for mineral door knobs. 

I expected to find it either in late 1849 or early 1850 (for the patent issued in mid-1849) but it was still a “surprise” to see it there before me. Lincoln published this shortly after leaving his one-term position in the U.S. Congress, returning to Springfield (Illinois) to practice law. (Lincoln was born near Hodgenville, Kentucky, a town of a few hundred people and 200 miles to the southeast of Springfield, which in 1850 was home to about 5,000.)  So, there it is, the not-famous A. Lincoln’s patent for lifting a boat out of the water and over some river shoals. Nice idea.