Abe Lincoln Holds the Only (and the Weirdest) Presidential Patent

Hey , happy Lincoln ’s birthday ! Abe would have been 206 today , and the US Patent and Trademark Office take the chance toremind us of a foreign and oft - forgotten fact : The United States ’ 16th president is the only one to ever obligate a patent . And a very interesting patent , at that .

Lincoln ’s patent was only#6,469 in the USPTO ’s organization , and it was filed March 10 , 1849 , twelve age before Lincoln would take office . At this point , Abe was still a rural lawyer in Illinois , and in a way , explains a mass about the idea he patent . But first , what exactly does old # 6,469 describe ? A method for “ buoy vessel over shoals . ” Sounds mundane , but permit ’s look tight .

Lincoln ’s approximation was essentially an innovation to shipbuilding : He suppose a series of fabric balloons or bladder that attached to the sharpness and undersides of a ship — and inflated to bring up the boat higher above the waterline in the shallows . Thus , Lincoln explained , the bladders would ” enable them to pass over bars , or through shallow urine , without discharging their cargoes . ”

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That language is in reality very telling : As a son , Lincoln spent a bonny amount of time on the river and lakes of the Midwest . Some sourcesclaim he was inspired by his experience as a jack on flatboats as a teenager — which let in a anecdote in which his boat was grounded on the Sangamon River . Others , like biographerRonald C. White , say it was inspired by getting suck on a sandbar while working as a prairie lawyer , traveling through Illinois for much of the year .

A model of the system . David and Jessie / CC

Hilariously , Lincoln ’s friend William Henry Herndon hadthe following to say about the labor :

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Occasionally he would fetch the modelling in the office , and while whittling on it would warble on its merits and the revolution it was destined to work in steamboat seafaring . Although I consider the thing as impracticable I read nothing , believably out of respect for Lincoln ’s well - known reputation as a boatman .

woefully , not much came of the theme . A little more than a 10 after he filed the design , he ’d be sworn in as president of a country on the edge of a civil war .

Although , inTeam of Rivals , Doris Kearns Goodwin did handle to use the patent as a solid burn to distinguish the failure of Lincoln ’s early days in the House : “ Unfortunately , no correspondent gimmick exist to refloat a political vocation run aground . ” Booyah .

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