Abraham Lincoln is forever cherished in history as being one of the greatest U.S. presidents. He brought about the emancipation of slaves and preserved the Union during the Civil War. He is also the only president to hold a patent for an invention.
Earlier in life, Lincoln learned a bit about river navigation when he took a flatbed down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Years later, as a young Congressman on his way home to Illinois, he became stranded on a sandbar and saw that “the captain ordered the hands to collect all the loose planks, empty barrels and boxes and force them under the sides of the boat. These empty casks were used to buoy it up.”
This inspired Lincoln to develop his own device of fabric bladders that could be inflated and would lift the vessel above the water's surface.
Lincoln's invention was never manufactured but a scale model of the ship outfitted with the device Lincoln made survives and is now in the Smithsonian Institution.
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