You can patent an idea for a device but you have to provide blueprints about how to build it including diagrams to clearly show the idea.
Inventions often come about because of a necessity, but not all inventions become realities, as we see in this 1849 story about Abraham Lincoln, more than twelve years before he became the 16th President of the United States.
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| Abraham Lincoln, inventor of an idea called “Buoying Vessels Over Shoals." 1849. |
Like his father before him, Abraham Lincoln was fascinated by mechanical things and was very skilled with tools. When he was a young candidate for the Illinois General Assembly and later in Congress, he lectured on inventions and discoveries, praising the patent laws for the methods that were in place to legally safeguard an idea for the inventor.
On May 22, 1849, Abraham Lincoln received Patent Number 6469 for a device that lifts boats over shoals. The invention was never manufactured, but the replica (pictured above) is on display at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.
In March 1831, Lincoln hired himself out with two friends to deliver a flatboat and cargo down the Illinois River, from Beardstown, Illinois to New Orleans, Louisiana. On the way to the Illinois River, the flatboat got stranded on a mill dam in New Salem, a small town that ran along the Sangamon River.
It took some time to unload the cargo, borrow an auger from the village cooper and drill a hole in the bow to let out the water. Then the hole was plugged, they moved the boat over the dam and continued on to New Orleans. The experience led him to think about improving technology in the shipping industry, especially on the Sangamon River.
When he became a candidate for the Illinois General Assembly from Sangamon County, the idea for his invention was ever-present in his mind. He published speeches about how to improve the navigation on the Sangamon River.
In between sessions of Congress, he continually worked on his invention. In 1848, he created his last scale model and took it to Washington with him. He hired attorney Z C Robbins to apply for his patent, calling it “Buoying Vessels Over Shoals.”
"Be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, of Springfield, Sangamon County, 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 sand bars or through shallow water, without discharging their cargoes."
It had two expandable chambers along each side of the boat and when filled with air and forced down into the water, it gave the boat more buoyancy to lift itself up to clear the shoals.
Although Lincoln actively promoted his idea and genuinely thought it would be of great benefit the shipping industry, nothing ever came of it nor was it ever manufactured. Lincoln's high hopes of becoming rich were dashed and he considered himself a failure as an inventor.
To date, Lincoln remains the only American President to hold a patent that officially recognizes him as an inventor.
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