Lincoln the Inventor

by Jason Emerson

Overview

In addition to his other accomplishment, Abraham Lincoln was the only U.S. President to hold a registered patent. Jason Emerson offers the first treatment of Lincoln's invention of a device to buoy vessels over shoals and its subsequent patent in May 1849 as more than mere historical footnote. As Emerson demonstrates, Lincoln'S scientific curiosity helped drive his lifelong intellectual development and influenced his treatment of inventors and innovators both as a lawyer and as president.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780809328970
Publisher:	Southern Illinois University Press
Publication date:	01/15/2009
Edition description:	1st Edition
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

Jason Emerson, the author of The Madness of Mary Lincoln, is an independent historian and freelance writer whose articles have appeared in American Heritage, American History, and Civil War Times magazines, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Lincoln Herald, and Lincoln Forum Bulletin. He is writing a biography of Robert T. Lincoln, to be published by Southern Illinois University Press.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations IX

Preface XI

Acknowledgments XV

Abraham Lincoln's Mechanical Mind 1

Lincoln's Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions: The Unknown Draft 35

Appendix I: Patent No. 6,469, May 22, 1849, Buoying Vessels over Shoals, Abraham Lincoln, of Springfield, Illinois 57.

Appendix 2:Lincoln's First and Second Lectures on Discoveries and Inventions 61

Notes 81

Bibliography 101

Index 109

Editorial Reviews

“You will come away from Lincoln the Inventor the wiser for understanding how the mind that devised a patent for floating grounded river boats could also be the same mind that turned out the perfectly-balanced phrases of the Gettysburg Address, labored to promote transportation as the keystone to economic mobility, and piloted emancipation through the shoals of war.”—Allen C. Guelzo, author of Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America

From the Publisher