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Apart from bringing us
laws, wars, peace, hanging chads, lobbies, sex scandals, First
Ladies and Rough Riders, there have been presidents and Founding
Fathers who have brought us all kinds of gadgets and inventions.
Jump to see the best tech that the fearless leaders of the free
world had to offer us.
galleryPost('presidentialinventions', 3, 'presidential inventions');
Thomas Jefferson, the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence, also brought us the automatic door, swivel chair and designed the first ever macaroni machine. Ben Franklin, while never president, is definitely the geeks' choice for the man who never was but should have been—I mean, faced with he or Al Gore, who would you vote for?—was even more prolific. Blame him for bifocals, lightning rods, glass harmonicas and the odometer, that little counter that racks up your car's mileage, although Franklin's version was designed for carriages.
Finally, we have President Lincoln, the only US President to
have obtained a patent, for a device to lift boats over schoals,
after a couple of incidents when traveling by boat, first in 1831,
and then in 1848, while traveling home from Congress. The patent
application reads: "Be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, of
Springfield, in the county of Sangamon, in the state of Illinois,
have invented a new and improved manner of combining adjustable
buoyant air chambers with a steam boat or other vessel for the
purpose of enabling their draught of water to be readily lessened
to enable them to pass over bars, or through shallow water, without
discharging their cargoes." Babraham's design never saw the light
of day, however. [Wikipedia]