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B. Lincoln's patent was granted on May 22, 1849, for a device for "buoying vessels over shoals". His idea, to equip boats with inflatable bellows of "india-rubber cloth, or some other suitable water-proof fabric", came about as a result of river and lake expeditions he had made as a young man, ferrying people and produce on the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. At least twice, his boats ran aground on sandbars. Given the ever-shifting shallows on the Mississippi, such potentially dangerous misadventures happened often. Freeing a stranded vessel usually involved the laborious unloading of cargo until the boat floated high enough to clear the obstacle.

C. Lincoln appears to have had more than a passing affinity for mechanical devices and tools. William H. Herndon, his law partner at the time when he was working on his invention, wrote that Lincoln "evinced a decided bent toward machinery or mechanical appliances, a trait he doubtless inherited from his father who was himself something of a mechanic." Lincoln is said to have been interested in water transportation and canal building, and enthusiastically promoted both when he served in the Illinois legislature. He was also an admirer of patent law, famously declaring that it "added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery and production of new and useful things."

D. According to Herndon, Lincoln would bring the wooden boat model into the law office and while working on it, would elaborate on its merits and the revolution it was destined to work in steamboat navigation. A Springfield mechanic, Walter Davis, was said to have provided tools and advice for constructing the original model. But it's thought that the detailed miniature of the boat which Lincoln submitted to the patent office may have been made by a model maker in Washington who specialized in aiding inventors.

E. The patent describes in detail how by turning the main shaft or shafts in one direction, the buoyant chambers of the flotation system would be forced downwards into the water and at the same time would expand and fill with air. As the invention never went beyond the prototype stage, doubts remain as to whether it would have been capable of achieving its stated aim, due to the amount of force needed to lower and fill the air chambers.

Adapted from: www.smithsonianmag.com