This article first appeared in October of 2009.
Can you name the only President to hold a registered patent with the U.S. patent office? It’s Abraham Lincoln. In 1849, the relatively unknown 40 year old lawyer from Springfield, Illinois asked for, and was granted, Patent No. 6469 for a device used to lift boats over sandbars after they’d run aground. Although his invention was never manufactured, it did make him the only U.S. President to hold a patent.
Abraham Lincoln’s interest in river life was developed as a young man living in southern Indiana. His family had intimate knowledge of life on the river and at least one minor disaster that would resonate in young Abe’s life. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was a carpenter by trade. As frontier migration fueled a spirit of manifest destiny in America, Thomas decided he should take his skills and head to Indiana. After all, new cabins were being built, new furniture would be needed to equip them, and he had the expertise to do it. So Thomas sold his Kentucky farm for a piece of land in the Hoosier forest in Southern Indiana. He built a sturdy raft and loaded it with his tools, personal possessions and ten barrels of whisky. The barrels contained 400 gallons of whisky, which, along with twenty dollars in cash, had been the purchase price of the farm he and his family were leaving behind.
Shoving off from the mouth of Knob Creek on his flatboat, his plan was to navigate the Salt River to the Ohio, but, about a half mile from his cabin, the waters of the Rolling Fork stream turned into rapids and the boat was swamped. The elder Lincoln lost all his tools and some of his whiskey overboard. That experience remained with young Abe for decades. He made his first trip by flat boat to New Orleans in 1828 as a 19-year-old Hoosier. Lincoln displayed a lifelong fascination with mechanical things, a trait inherited from his father who, as a Hoosier farmer, was a practiced mechanic skilled in the use of tools. Lincoln would carry this trait throughout the rest of his life. It was not uncommon to find Lincoln, while traveling the circuit as a young lawyer, examining and tinkering with some farming implement, machine or tool with an eye on improving its efficiency for its owner.
In the early years of U.S. history the only roads were in and around cities. This made transportation of goods and people largely reliant upon water routes or interior rivers. The vast interior of the land was reachable only by rivers, on foot or by horseback. One problem river navigation suffered was that boats could easily become stuck on sand bars, which then required much pulling and digging to free them. As a country lawyer, Abraham Lincoln traveled extensively by river boat, and observed many a stranding. He came up with a device which would raise a stranded boat in the water, thus allowing it to be pulled off a sand bar.
Lincoln started work on his invention between sessions of his one term in Congress in 1848, while on his way home to Illinois, his boat became stuck on a sandbar. Lincoln watched as the captain ordered the hands to collect all the loose wood, empty barrels, boxes and anything that would float in order to force them under the sides of the flat boat which forced the boat to lift gradually until it floated free from the sand bar. As he watched this theory in practice, Lincoln reckoned that in a similar situation, if a set of inflatable floats were attached to the hull of the ship just below the water line, bellows could fill these floats with air causing the vessel to float higher and extricate itself from the sandbar.
Lincoln created a scale model of his invention with the help of Walter Davis, a Springfield mechanic, who provided tools and advice. Abraham Lincoln whittled the patent model that accompanied the application with his own hands out of wood gathered around his Springfield home, giving the 18 to 20 inch long model the appearance of looking as if it had been whittled out of a shingle and a cigar box. Lincoln took the scale model with him to Washington and hired attorney Z. C. Robbins to apply for the patent. Part of his application read, “Be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, of Springfield, in the county of Sangamon, in the state of Illinois, have invented a new and improved manner of combining adjustable buoyant air chambers with a steam boat or other vessel for the purpose of enabling their draught of water to be readily lessened to enable them to pass over bars, or through shallow water, without discharging their cargoes…”
Lincoln’s law partner, William Herndon recalled, “Occasionally he would bring the model in the office, and while whittling on it would descant on its merits and the revolution it was destined to work in steamboat navigation. Although I regarded the thing as impracticable I said nothing, probably out of respect for Lincoln’s well-known reputation as a boatman.” With some relief Herndon said, “The invention was never applied to any vessel, so far as I ever learned, and the threatened revolution in steamboat architecture and navigation never came to pass.”
On May 22, 1849, Abraham Lincoln was granted Patent No. 6469 by the U.S. Patent Office on a device for “Buoying Vessels over Shoals.” As noted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Lincoln’s “invention consists of a set of bellows attached to the hull of a ship just below the water line. On reaching a shallow place, the bellows are filled with air and the vessel, thus buoyed, is expected to float clear.” This boat model, submitted with the drawings of his idea, is inscribed “Pat./May 22/49/Abram Lincoln” on the surface of the upper deck. It is on display at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History.
Unfortunately, it was discovered that the extra weight added by the massive device actually increased the probability of the boat’s running onto sandbars, defeating the purpose of the invention. Ever the optimist even in the face of defeat, Lincoln made speeches on discoveries and inventions before becoming president. In 1858, Lincoln cited the introduction of patent laws as one of the three most important developments “in the world’s history,” along with the discovery of America and the perfection of printing.
At the “Second Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions” in Jacksonville, Illinois on February 11, 1859 (the day before his 50th birthday) Lincoln praised the patent laws for “adding the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery and production of new and useful things.” According to a Lincoln biographer, the President visited the Patent Office during his presidency and inspected his model. In early 1997, the original patent drawing submitted in 1846 was discovered in the director’s office at the USPO, lacking only the president’s autograph in the lower right corner. The model itself was on display for years in Osborn Oldroyd’s museum of Lincolniana inside the House Where Lincoln Died in Washington, D.C.
In this, the 210th anniversary year of Lincoln’s birth, I think it’s important to remember just how valuable Lincoln’s legacy is to this country and how much of his greatness can be traced back to his days spent here in Indiana. Keep in mind that this is a man who claimed less than eight months of formal education in his entire lifeftime. Proof, yet again, that Hoosiers can do anything.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
