Abraham Lincoln, Inventor (Mar, 1924) You can view Abe’s one and
only patent here. ABRAHAM LINCOLN AN INVENTOR, PATENT RECORDS
REVEAL WHILE every schoolboy is familiar with the life of
Abraham Lincolnâ€” a pioneer home, few books, hard labor at all
the many trades of the frontiersman and the battle to save the
Union and abolish slaveryâ€”few know that he also was an
inventor. To his genius as a statesman a united nation today
bears witness, but only a rude model in the archives of the
National Museum at Washington remains to give mute evidence that
he possessed an inventive ability that alone, if followed, might
have won him enduring fame. Appearing as though it had been
whittled out of a shingle and a cigar box, the model is about
eighteen or twenty inches long, and bears the inscription:
“6469, Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois. Improvement in
method of lifting vessels over shoals. Patented May 22, 1849.”
The apparatus consisted of a bellows placed in each side of the
hull of the craft, just below the