Lincoln's patent

[RJNorton]

In The Prairie Years (volume 1) Carl Sandburg wrote:

"In a corner of his Springfield office Lincoln whittled and shaped a wooden model of a steamboat with "adjustable buoyant air chambers," "sliding spars," ropes and pulleys. On the Detroit River he had seen a steamboat stuck on a sand bar; barrels, boxes and empty casks forced under the vessel lifted it off. Lincoln finished a model, wrote a description of its workings, and the next year had it patented."