Today’s #stampoftheday features Abraham Lincoln, who on May 22, 1849 received a patent for “Buoying Vessels Over Shoals,” via a system of waterproof fabric compartments that could be inflated when needed to help ships move over obstacles such as the sandbars that he knew from experience made it difficult to move cargo from Illinois down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. To this day, Lincoln is still the only president who was granted a patent.

(The current president, of course, might argue that he is so smart that he could have gotten one if he tried….Or, perhaps, he might just assert that he has a patent and rebuke anyone who notes that such a statement isn’t true. )

…But I digress; so back to Lincoln, his patent, and something relaterd to stamps.

According to Mystic Stamps’ wonderful “This Day in History” feature, which noted today’s anniversary, Lincoln’s patent grew out of his experiences and interest in ways to improve river navigation. As a teenager he had worked on flatboats carrying cargo down the Ohio and Mississippi River, where he often encountered boats that were stuck on sandbars.

In 1832, the 23-year old Lincoln, who was then as a clerk in a store in the small village of New Salem, Illinois, located about 20 miles north of Springfield along the Sangamo River, made improvements to river a centerpiece of his campaign for the state legislature, which was his first run for office. In his campaign announcement, he noted: “it is probable that for the last twelve months I have given as particular attention to the stage of the water in this river as any other person in the country. In the month of March, 1831, in company of others, I commenced the building of a flat boat on the Sangamo, and finished and took her out in the course of the spring. Since that time, I have been concerned in the mill at New Salem. These circumstances are sufficient evidence, that I have not been very inattentive to the stages of the water.”

[Lincoln, apparently didn’t mind using a double negative]

While Lincoln, who had only been living in the county for about a year developed a reputation as an excellent speaker and storyteller, he finished 8th in the 12-person field competing for four seats. But he was elected two years later and in 1846 he was elected to Congress, where he continued to be an avid supporter of “internal improvements” that would facilitate trade, such as making rivers more navigable and expanding railroads.

Lincoln also developed a tool that would allow the crew of a stuck boat to inflate chambers at the bottom of the boat that would then lift it over top of the water, away from potential damage. In March 1849, not long after he had come to Washington, Lincoln submitted a application for a patent on his invention, which was granted on May 22, 1849.

Lincoln’s invention was never produced or put into use and it’s not at all clear that it would have been practical. But the experience may have whetted his interest in patents, which he outlined in two seminal speeches, the second given in February 1859, more than a year before he was elected President. He noted that before patent laws: “any man might instantly use what another had invented; so that the inventor had no special advantage from his own invention.”

By changing this, patents “added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius, in the discovery and production of new and useful things.” In fact, he claimed, because their “of their great efficiency in facilitating all other inventions and discoveries,”patents, along with the creation of writing , the development of the printing press, and the discovery of America, were the three most important inventions and discoveries in history of the world.

There is no stamp honoring Lincoln the inventor or Lincoln the supporter of patent laws. But there have been numerous stamps honoring Lincoln the president. Shown here are the first two, an 1866 stamp issued about a year after he was assassinated and a version of that stamp issued in 1867 when the US began using a “grilling method” to emboss stamps. (By breaking paper fibers, grilling allowed canceling ink to soak deeply into the paper so that it was difficult to remove cancels and reuse stamps.) The process was used for stamps issued between 1867 to 1875.

Stay safe and be well!