Lincoln Is The Only President To Have Obtained A Patent

There are other American political figures who have shown more creativity than Benjamin Franklin. Lincoln, who enjoyed fiddling with machinery, developed a system for keeping ships afloat when traveling through shallow waters by using empty metal air chambers attached to their sides after being onboard a steamboat that ran aground on low shoals and had to unload its cargo. Abraham Lincoln submitted a patent application to the US Patent Office on March 10, 1849, for a tool for "buoying vessels across shoals." Two months later, Patent No. 6,469 was authorized, making Abraham Lincoln the sole US president with a patent.

Lincoln was stranded twice on riverboats that had run aground during his brief employment as a ferryman on the Mississippi River. His "adjustable buoyant air chambers" would be fastened to a boat's sides. To elevate the boat over obstacles in the water, they could be lowered into the water and inflated. Walter Davis, a Springfield mechanic, supplied the equipment and guidance as Lincoln honed the scale patent model. Due to the effort required to lower and fill the air chambers, the device was never made for use in reality, and questions still surround whether it would have been a valuable idea.