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Abe Lincoln's patent for a river navigation device
On March 10, 1849, eight score and four years ago yesterday, a future president brought forth on this continent a new notion for improving river navigation.
That was the day Abraham Lincoln filed a patent application for his imaginative method of "Buoying Vessels Over Shoals."
At age 22, Lincoln had been a crewman on a flatboat that got stuck on a dam at New Salem, Ill., a bit of Lincoln folklore depicted in the 1940 film "Abe Lincoln in Illinois," with Raymond Massey in the starring role.
After another riverboat grounding incident in 1848 when he … Read more
