A guide through troubled waters
Abraham Lincoln is known for his leadership during the Civil War, his soaring oration, and his rise as a self-taught prairie lawyer. He is also the only U.S. president to be granted a patent. Lincoln’s invention is evidence of his curious mind, penchant for learning new skills, and his desire to solve problems. As we celebrate America’s 250th year, join us as we delve into a lesser-known aspect of our 16th president’s story; that of Abraham Lincoln, the inventor.
19 min read
Each month, our Journeys of Innovation series tells the stories of inventors or entrepreneurs who have made a positive difference in the world. This month’s story focuses on Abraham Lincoln, the only U.S. president to be granted a patent.
Do you know an innovator or entrepreneur with an interesting story?
American flags and patriotic bunting adorned the doric columns lining the Patent Office’s cavernous third floor. For the evening of March 6, 1865, an empty hall in the building’s North wing was transformed into a space for thousands of revelers dressed in resplendent silks and fine suits. Under the soft glow of gas lamps, attendees danced the quadrille, feasted on oyster and terrapin stews, and mingled with guests from around the world.
It was a night of celebration, for President Abraham Lincoln had been elected to a second term.
Two days prior, spectators in Washington, D.C. trudged through inches of mud, courtesy of heavy spring rain, to witness Lincoln’s inaugural address. Although the nation was still mired in a devastating Civil War, military and legislative successes gave the populace hope for brighter days ahead. Reflecting this sentiment in what is now one of his most renowned speeches, Lincoln concluded his address with a charge to “bind up the nation’s wounds” and “achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace.”
A much smaller number of dignitaries, elected officials, service members, admirers, and friends attended the inaugural ball.
Prior to 1937, presidential inaugurations were held in March rather than January.
(Courtesy of the Illustrated London Times/Newspapers.com)
For the price of $10 per ticket, guests received the privilege of an evening at the Patent Office. They entered through the South Wing portico, where the Virginia sandstone steps were illuminated with gas lanterns. After hanging their coats and shawls, women used the offices of the Commissioner for final touches on their hair and makeup. The Eastern Hall was used for promenade, where guests encountered the first of three bands. Dancing began at 10 p.m. A 250-foot-long banquet table, stationed between patent model cases, was laden with pheasants and foie gras, almond sponge cake, and maraschino ice cream.
At 10:30 p.m., the band struck up “Hail to the Chief.”
Abraham Lincoln entered the ballroom wearing a simple black suit and white gloves. The Commander in Chief, along with his party, proceeded to a raised dais, bowed to his guests, and was seated.
The merriment continued.
Lincoln’s inaugural ball marked the first time a federal agency had been used for such an occasion. But the Patent Office was far from a typical government building, and this was not Lincoln’s first association with the world of patents. Spanning a full city block between F and G Streets in Washington, D.C., the Greek revival structure was also a premiere tourist attraction in Washington, D.C. The building’s second floor held a vast museum, where exhibits ranged from boxes of beetle specimens to marble statues from Pompeii to a fragment of Plymouth Rock. Even the Declaration of Independence was on display there from 1841 until 1876. Fulfilling the need for an educational and cultural exhibit hall for a growing nation, the Patent Office was at once a repository of natural history and scientific specimens, a collection of world cultural items, and a gallery dedicated to the vital work of a growing agency.
The museum main exhibits, however, were the inventions themselves. Rows and rows of glass cases contained thousands of patent models, tangible representations of both the incremental improvements and the world-changing technologies that made their way through the Patent Office’s storied halls.
Among those patent models was one for a new and novel method of buoying vessels over shoals.
The name of the inventor?
Abraham Lincoln.
From 1790 until 1880, patent models were required for the majority of patent applications. This model for Abraham Lincoln’s U.S. Patent No. 6469 was in part whittled by hand by the future president.
(Courtesy of the National Museum of American History)
In their summarization of Lincoln’s inaugural ball, a Washington, D.C., newspaper described the president as having “safely guided [the nation] through the troubled waters of political strife.”
Abraham Lincoln was no stranger to troubled waters, political or otherwise. Decades prior to his presidency, he spent time navigating the rivers of America’s heartland, from the shallows of the Sangamon to the mighty Mississippi. His political career necessitated travel by steamboat over America’s eastern seaboard, where he witnessed both the power of water as a hazard and a force to be harnessed. These experiences led Lincoln to combine his practical experience with his brilliant intellect to come up with a solution to a problem, a process he would replicate thousands of times throughout his life.
“[I]t was a tribute of respect to the Chief Magistrate who came four years ago, when our National Ship of State was in peril, and who has safely guided her through the troubled waters of political strife.”
The humble circumstances of Abraham Lincoln’s birth little predicted his future ascension to the nation’s highest office. On February 12, 1809, in a one-room log cabin with a dirt floor, Nancy and Thomas Lincoln welcomed a baby boy. Young Abraham spent the first seven years of his life amidst the red clay of the Kentucky frontier, where he received a rudimentary education, intellectual encouragement from his mother, and practical farming knowledge from his father.
In 1816, the Lincolns left Kentucky for Indiana, the same year their new home was granted statehood. For the next 14 years, Abraham grew, read, and learned new skills on the banks of Little Pigeon Creek. Formal schooling was inconsistent at best on the frontier, but this did not dampen Lincoln’s thirst for knowledge. According to the recollections of his cousin, Dennis Hanks, young Abraham practiced writing his name on any surface he could find, with bits of charcoal and ink made of blackberry briar roots.
Just two years after the Lincolns arrived in Indiana, tragedy struck the family when Nancy Hanks Lincoln died of milk sickness, a scourge of the countryside. In 1819, Thomas remarried. Reflecting on his childhood, Lincoln would credit both his mother Nancy and his stepmother Sarah as having a profound influence in fostering his curiosity and his intellectual development.
After a long morning of plowing or tending to the family farm, he would read under a tree while eating lunch.
(Courtesy of the Library of Congress)
From an early age, Lincoln was a voracious reader. Books were scarce on the Indiana frontier, but young Abraham greeted this fact not as a deterrent but a challenge. “He cut four cords of wood once to get one stingy slice of a book,” Hanks recalled. “I never seen Abe after he was twelve that he didn’t have a book in his hand or his pocket.”
The economic realities of rural life meant that Lincoln was not free to solely focus on educational pursuits. And as he grew into young adulthood, Lincoln began taking odd jobs to both finance his growing library and to satiate his curiosity about the world.
Lincoln's first major experience with riverboats came in 1828, when he was hired to accompany a local business owner’s son on a flatboat to New Orleans. The 19-year-old Lincoln was paid $8 per month as a bow hand, and his tasks included helping build the vessel itself. This hands-on engineering work gave him vital knowledge of the physics behind a successful river journey.
The year 1830 marked another move for the Lincoln family, this time to Illinois. They settled on the banks of the Sangamon River, and Lincoln departed on his second flatboat trip down the Mississippi just months later, in early 1831. With more experience under his belt, Lincoln was able to act as “both the engineer and the engine,” using his physical strength and mental quickness to help navigate both the debris-filled shallows and the deep, quick waters of the Mississippi.
During this voyage, Lincoln’s flatboat ran aground on a milldam in a shallow section of the Sangamon. Thinking quickly, Lincoln ordered the cargo, which included several hogs, removed. This increased the boat’s buoyancy but was not enough to free the vessel. With a borrowed auger, he drilled a hole in the bow of the flatboat to let water escape, and then rolled some of the barrels on board to the bow to advantageously tilt the boat. After half a day and a night of tiring work, the vessel was free. This experience highlighted the challenges of river travel for even small vessels, and it was one Lincoln would remember years later, when witnessing a similar situation, this time with a steamboat.
After returning from New Orleans, Lincoln decided to strike out on his own, moving downriver to New Salem. He built a reputation as a reliable river boatman in his new home, learning the seasonally shifting twists, turns, and idiosyncrasies of the Sangamon.
It was also in New Salem that Lincoln took his first forays into the realm of politics, beginning with a failed campaign for the Illinois State Assembly in 1832, followed by a successful one in 1834. While serving in the assembly, Lincoln received his law license, and he made another move, this time to the state capital of Springfield, in 1837.
Lincoln lived in Springfield for most of his adult life. Here, he practiced law, advanced his political career, married and started a family of his own, and even applied for a patent.
“Occasionally he would bring the model in the office, and while whittling on it would descant on its merits and the revolution it was destined to work in steamboat navigation.”
Although Springfield remained his home, the late 1840s found Lincoln in yet another new landscape. In less than two decades, Lincoln would walk the streets of Washington, D.C. and navigate the chambers of the U.S. Capital as if it was second nature. But as a freshman congressman in 1847, the mechanisms of federal governance were, just like the twists and turns of the Sangamon, something he needed to learn.
And learn he did. Lincoln drafted reports with suggestions to improve the post office, took advantage of the capital city’s libraries, and with his natural humor and affinity for storytelling, made himself many friends.
During this first term in Congress, Lincoln paid his first visit to the Patent Office along with his 4-year-old son, Robert. Along with tourists from around the world, the Lincolns marveled at the thousands of patent models on display, representing the latest in American ingenuity.
Perhaps this visit served as inspiration for Lincoln to take his mechanical inclinations beyond the realm of mere interest and into the world of invention.
The first known image of Abraham Lincoln, circa 1846-47.
(Courtesy of the Library of Congress)
While returning home from a tour of New England in support of the Whig presidential candidate in 1848, Lincoln witnessed a steamboat named "The Canada" run aground in the Detroit River. The future president and his young family watched from the deck of their own ship as the crew of "The Canada" worked to free their vessel. Using barrels, boxes, planks — anything they could get their hands on —they pushed them under the sides of the boat to lift it up until the vessel cleared the sand bar it was stuck on. This experience gave Lincoln an idea, which would eventually lead to a United States patent.
Lincoln’s invention, titled a “method for buoying vessels over shoals,” relied on chambers on either side of a boat or ship that could be inflated with a system of shafts, ropes, and pulleys. This was a major improvement over the ad hoc process Lincoln had both seen and experienced, because the cargo did not need to be unloaded for it to work. It also didn’t harm the vessel. When not in use, the proposed chambers would contract into a very small space, providing an elegant and unobtrusive solution to this common navigational problem.
This process from idea to patent mirrored that of many inventors. Inventions start with an idea, but an idea alone is not enough to receive a patent. Instead, applicants needed to clearly explain how their invention would function in their patent application. At the time Lincoln was applying for his patent, patent models—miniaturized, working examples of the invention—were also required by the Patent Office. Lincoln created one with the help of Springfield mechanic Walter Davis’s shop, even whittling portions of it with his own hands.
In November 1848, to the great interest of the people of Springfield, Lincoln tested his model. Placing the four-foot-long vessel into a trough near his law office, he placed bricks on top of the “deck” until it began to sink. When Lincoln inflated the buoyant air chambers, the model floated once more.
With his model completed, Lincoln turned his attention to drafting the written explanation of his invention. When he returned to the nation’s capital for the next congressional session, he consulted with Washington, D.C. patent attorney, Z.C. Robbins, who advised that the invention was patentable and filed the application on March 10, 1849. By April 10, Lincoln’s patent application had been reviewed by an examiner at the Patent Office, and Robbins wrote to him that he had “obtained a favorable decision on your application.” The patent was granted on May 22, just over two months after it was filed.
When Lincoln received U.S. Patent No. 6469 on May 22, 1849, both patent models and drawings were required by the Patent Office.
(Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration)
Despite this success, Lincoln never brought his product to market or made any money off his invention. William Herndon, his law partner, suggested that there may have been some concerns about the invention’s practicality in his biography of Lincoln: “Although I regarded the thing as impracticable I said nothing, probably out of respect for Lincoln's well-known reputation as a boatman.”
It was also possible that with Lincoln’s law practice and his political aspirations, he was simply too busy. A successful patent application did not guarantee a commercially successful product. There was a lot of work ahead for inventors after being granted a patent, especially at this time, when inventors were often expected to take a personal role in marketing.
Lincoln’s priorities laid elsewhere, but this was far from the last time Lincoln would encounter the patent system in his work.
Lincoln’s home in Springfield, Illinois, as well as his boyhood homes in Kentucky and Indiana, are now designated as national historic sites.
(Courtesy of the Library of Congress)
Lincoln practiced law for over two decades before being elected president, and the cases he took on were highly diverse. A handful of these cases related to patent law, which at the time was an obscure field typically reserved for seasoned lawyers. The patent cases Lincoln litigated reveal quite a bit about how he approached his practice, as well as some of the challenges with the patent system at the time.
The most common reason patents ended up in the court system was patent infringement. In a patent infringement case, the plaintiff is either arguing that someone used their patented technology without their permission, or that a patent never should have been granted because the invention already existed.
One patent case that highlights Lincoln’s hands-on approach to law was Parker v. Hoyt in 1850. Lincoln represented the defendant, who allegedly infringed on a patent for a water wheel. Lincoln argued that the invention was based on commonsense technology and therefore should not have been eligible for a patent. In order to prove this, he explained the action of water on a wheel clearly, based on his own experience working in a sawmill. Lincoln won the case.
Another case spoke to some of the confusion over the differences between utility and design patents at the time. A patent issued to Alexander Edmunds for the ornamental design of a baby cradle became the subject of four different court cases. Plaintiffs John and George Myers claimed that Edmunds misrepresented that the patent they purchased would cover the function of the cradle, not just the design. The plaintiffs retained Lincoln, and originally won the case, but lost the appeal on the grounds that they did not disclose the profits they had earned from the cradle.
Ironically, perhaps the most famous patent case associated with Lincoln is McCormick v. Manny. Although he did not have a substantial role in the outcome of the case, it had wider implications for his professional career, and later, his presidency.
Cyrus McCormick and John Manny were both patent holders and competitors in the field of reaping machines. McCormick filed a patent infringement suit against Manny in 1854, and Manny hired patent attorney George Harding to represent him. Initially, Harding retained Lincoln to make the case’s closing argument. However, after developing concerns about Lincoln’s relative inexperience and folksy oratory style, he asked well-known attorney Edwin Stanton to do the same.
Uninformed of this change, Lincoln continued to prepare for the case, even visiting Manny’s factory near Chicago in order to examine his machinery in person. But the silence from Harding began to concern him. Writing to Manny’s company in September of 1855, Lincoln explained, “I have heard nothing concerning the Reaper suit,” since leaving the factory in July. “Is it still the understanding that the case is to be heard at Cincinnati on the 20th inst.?”
Lincoln went to Cincinnati, only to watch Stanton give the closing argument. Throughout the trial, Stanton snubbed Lincoln, referring to him as an “ape” and asking why he was brought from Illinois when he “can do you no good.” Despite the poor treatment, Lincoln was impressed by Stanton’s work and later appointed him to his presidential cabinet as secretary of war.
This experience spurred Lincoln to refine his style of arguments, as well as deepen his study of the law. Yet, in retrospect, George Harding believed it was he and Stanton who were wrong. “Mr. Stanton saw at Cincinnati in Mr. Lincoln only his gaunt, rugged features, his awkward dress and carriage, and heard only his rural jokes,” Harding related to Lincoln biographer Ida Tarbell in 1900. “[B]ut Stanton lived to perceive in those rugged lineaments only expressions of nobility and loveliness of character, and to hear from his lips only wisdom, prudence, and courage.”
“The patent system... added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius, in the discovery and production of new and useful things.”
Although he did not pursue patent protection for any subsequent inventions, Lincoln believed innovation was key to bettering the nation’s economy.
Between 1858 and 1860, possibly as a moneymaking venture after his famous but failed Senate campaign against Stephen Douglass, Lincoln gave a series of lectures on science and innovation. The overall theme of these speeches centered around the idea that free labor and innovative progress contribute to the human condition. Relying on his extensive research into the subject of technological development, Lincoln took his audience through thousands of years of human development. “Man is not the only animal who labors,” Lincoln explained, “but he is the only one who improves his workmanship.” He cited written speech as key to promoting innovation and saw technological advancement as a key to ending slavery as an institution by rendering it needless.
Likely the most famous line Lincoln delivered in this series of speeches is now engraved on both the facade of the Department of Commerce and on the back of the medals given to inductees to the National Inventors Hall of Fame: “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.”
A wagon toy Lincoln designed for his son Tad was described by Henry Ford as a precursor to the steering system used in automobiles.
(Courtesy of the Library of Congress)
On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected as the 16th president of the United States. One month later, South Carolina seceded from the Union, the first in a series of cascading events that sent the nation barreling towards a bloody civil war. A prairie lawyer who had previously only served one congressional term at the national level, Lincoln led the country through the most challenging time yet of its existence.
During Lincoln’s presidency, the Patent Office faced a decline in patent filings due to the war, but that was only one of the many interruptions. The building was used as a barracks for soldiers from the 1st Rhode Island infantry early in the war, and later as a hospital with room for around 800 patients, who rested among patent models much like the one Lincoln himself had submitted 15 years prior.
Despite the all-encompassing nature of the Civil War, Lincoln did find time to make some lasting improvements to the patent system during his presidency. During his administration, the Patent Office extended the length of patent protection for utility patents to 17 years and added flexibility in terms for design patents. Lincoln appointed three “examiners-in-chief” to hear appeals by inventors whose patents were rejected, the first instance of recourse for inventors in this situation outside of the courts. He also personally encouraged the use of emerging technologies in the war effort, such as in the development of the famed ironclad, the USS Monitor.
Although Lincoln’s contributions to the patent system as president were not as famous or as wide sweeping as his indelible contributions to human freedom and reuniting the nation, they nonetheless showed his understanding of how innovation could bring about positive change.
“The model still reposes in undisturbed slumber on the shelves in the Patent Office, and is the only evidence now existing of Lincoln's success as an inventor.”
Following Lincoln’s second inauguration, Massachusetts paper The Liberator almost prophetically wished, “[L]et him survive his term. Democracy is proud of him... He was humble, and she gave him power and place, but she failed to render him arrogant or corrupt... let him live...”
It was not to be. Just 40 days after hosting his inaugural ball at the Patent Office, Abraham Lincoln was dead from an assassin’s bullet.
At the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922, President Warren G. Harding gave the following assessment of Lincoln in the nation’s memory: “No great character in all history has been more eulogized, no towering figure more monumented, no likeness more portrayed.” One hundred and sixty-one years after Lincoln’s death, his legacy has reached the status of legend. His visage has been printed on currency and postage stamps, his likeness carved in marble and cast in bronze. Books have been penned on all aspects of Lincoln’s life, including his foray into inventing.
In 1925, due to lack of space, the Patent Office gave away and sold their collection of patent models. Lincoln’s model is now in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution.
(Courtesy of the Library of Congress)
Lincoln’s first-hand experience, both as a patentee and in practicing patent law, made him a president uniquely suited to understand the U.S. patent system. Growing up at a time of massive societal change, Lincoln recognized that innovation had the potential to make life better for all. His experience inventing and litigating reveal his determination to solve challenging problems and willingness to learn about new topics to do so, characteristics he took with him into his presidency.
As a young man, Abraham Lincoln relied on a combination of innate ability and determined self-improvement to navigate the hazardous waters of America’s frontier. As president, he used those same traits to meet a rising tide of political strife. In every stage of his life, Lincoln learned, created, and improved on what came before.
A yellowed patent drawing. A hand-whittled patent model. Words carved into marble. All reminders of Lincoln’s innovative spirit that survive to this day. But perhaps the greatest monument to the fire of his genius is our nation’s ability to endure, even in the most troubled waters.
Credits
Produced by the USPTO’s Office of the Chief Communications Officer. For feedback or questions, please contact inventorstories@uspto.gov.
Story by Rebekah Oakes. Contributions by Whitney Pandil-Eaton. Graphic on the USPTO.gov homepage and at the beginning of the story is by Gabriella McNevin-Melendez.
Note: Eleanor Atkinson’s interview with Dennis Hanks was published in dialect. Certain portions of his quotes have been edited for readability.
References
“Abraham Lincoln’s Boyhood in Indiana 1816 to 1830.” National Park Service. Accessed January 2026. https://www.nps.gov/articles/abraham-lincoln-boyhood-in-indiana-1816-to-1830
Atkinson, Eleanor. “Lincoln’s Boyhood Reminiscences of his Cousin and Play-Mate, Dennis Hanks.” New York: Colver Publishing House, 1908.
De Silva, Ian. “Evaluating Lincoln’s Patented Invention.” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Vol. 39, No. 2. 2018.
Emerson, Jason. Lincoln the Inventor. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009.
Gambino, Megan. “Document Deep Dive: The Menu from President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Ball.” Smithsonian Magazine, January 2013. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/document-deep-dive-the-menu-from-president-lincolns-second-inaugural-ball-1510874/
Herndon, William H. and Jesse W. Weik. Herndon’s Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life. Springfield, IL: The Herndon’s Lincoln Publishing Company, 1921.
“The Inauguration Ball.” Daily National Intelligencer. March 7, 1865.
“The Inauguration Ball.” New York Herald. March 8, 1865.
“’J.U.E.T.’ An Interesting Letter.” The Cairo Daily Bulletin, October 3, 1871.
Kent, David J. Lincoln: The Fire of Genius. Essex, CT: Lyons Press, 2022.
“Letters from New York.” The Liberator, March 17, 1865.
“National Portrait Gallery and National Collection of Fine Arts.” National Register of Historic Places Inventory – Nomination Form. July 1969.
“Papers of Abraham Lincoln Digital Library.” Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. https://papersofabrahamlincoln.org/about
Samuels, Jeffrey M. and Linda B. Samuels. “Lincoln and the Patent System: Inventor, Lawyer, Orator, President.” Albany Government Law Review, Vol. 3, Issue 2. May 2010.
Tarbell, Ida M. The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 1. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1925.
