May 22, 1849 – Abraham Lincoln Receives a Patent

On this day in history, Abraham Lincoln received a patent for a flotation device to lift riverboats stuck on sandbars. The idea was never developed, but Lincoln remains the only U.S. president to hold a patent.

Lincoln conceived the idea after twice traveling on boats that got hung up on obstructions. The original documentation of this patent was rediscovered in 1997. The device called for large bellows attached to the sides of a boat that were expandable by virtue of air chambers.

An online Abraham Lincoln site notes:

Lincoln displayed a lifelong fascination with mechanical things. William H. Herndon, his last law partner, attributed this to his father, saying, ‘he evinced a decided bent toward machinery or mechanical appliances, a trait he doubtless inherited from his father who was himself something of a mechanic and therefore skilled in the use of tools.’

Henry Whitney, another lawyer friend of Lincoln’s, recalled ‘While we were traveling in ante-railway days, on the circuit, and would stop at a farm-house for dinner, Lincoln would improve the leisure in hunting up some farming implement, machine or tool, and he would carefully examine it all over, first generally and then critically.’”

Before he became president, Lincoln delivered lectures on discoveries and inventions. In 1858, in several speeches, he observed:

Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his workmanship. This improvement, he effects by Discoveries, and Inventions..”

He praised patent laws in these speeches. Before such laws, as he said,

…any man might instantly use what another had invented; so that the inventor had no special advantage from his own invention. The patent system changed this; secured to the inventor, for a limited time, the exclusive use of his invention; and thereby added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius, in the discovery and production of new and useful things.”