When our president dabbles in science…

Who is Thomas Jefferson?

Thomas Jefferson is a talented man, the third president of the United States, the author of the American Declaration of Independence and the founding father of the country. He was the first secretary of state (1790-93), the second vice president (1797-1801) – a position he held after barely taking office as president and losing three votes. After fierce elections in 1801, he became the country’s third president and served for two terms until 1809.

Jefferson bought Louisiana purchase from Napoleon for $15 million. In 1803, the territory of Louisiana purchased from France almost doubled, making it one of the largest countries in the world. Jefferson also authorized the exploration of the American West and Northwest through Lewis and Clark Expeditions (1804-06).

In addition, Jefferson was also the founder and architect of the University of Virginia. In 1815, when he sold his personal library to the federal government in Washington, it was at the heart of the Library of Congress.

Jefferson’s ground laziness

Jefferson ranked second after becoming president after John Adams in 1797, and became vice president according to the system already existing at the time. In order to be sworn in as Vice President, he traveled to the capital – Philadelphia for a difficult 10-day trip.

Around the same time, he became the vice president of the country, and Jefferson became president of the American Philosophical Society. Jefferson’s interest in fossils has ended here, and it is well known that he has received from friends and acquaintances that have learned about his interests for decades, and he decided to take on a large number of fossils to show the society.

These include Colonel John Stewart of Greenbrier County, Virginia (now West Virginia), and Stewart’s assumption that the animal was a “lion.” When studying bones, Jefferson also concluded that they were from “the animals of lions, but the largest in size.” Because of the bulk of the animal, he called it “big claws or giant pricks”, which is expected to be three times that of a lion. Jefferson was originally scheduled to publish a paper on March 10 with his entry as president of society.

As fate would have it, Jefferson went to a bookstore after arriving in Philadelphia in March 1797. Here he met the London number in September 1796 Monthly Magazineas fate possesses, contains a carving of a fossil bone. Fossils of Paraguay – installed at the time by the Royal Cabinet in the natural history of Madrid, Spain, very similar to Jefferson’s “Megalonyx” but was identified as a lazy relative.

Realizing that his classification might be flawed, Jefferson modified the paper he was going to propose, removed all references to “Megalonyx” and replaced them with a more general term, “an animal with a paw.” Jefferson read his paper on March 10: “Memoirs on the Discovery of Four times the Bone of Western Virginia’s Claw Shape” and published in 1799 in the American Philosophical Society’s Transaction.

Fossil specimens Megalonyx Jeffersonii. |Photo source: Daderot / Wikimedia Commons

Jefferson’s scientific heritage

It is worth noting that when Jefferson invited Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in 1803, as this was the exploration of the West after the expedition of Lewis and Clark in Louisiana, he thought their Discovery Army was very suitable for scientific observation.

By 1804, Jefferson was known as the discoverer of Megalonyx, who had been identified as an animal associated with the lazy family. Less than twenty years later, in 1822, French naturalist Anselme Desmarest gave the official name of the extinct animals: Megalonyx Jeffersonii.

Jefferson’s ground laziness recovered from the Ice Age in the Midwest, it was a large, heavy animal with a large skull with a blunt nose and a huge chin. The teeth that are similar to nails are soft and therefore wear faster than hard teeth, which means the teeth of these animals are growing throughout their lives.

Jefferson’s scientific paper on these bones is said to mark the beginning of North American vertebrate paleontology.

did you know?

At the dinner of the Western Hemisphere Nobel Prize winners held at the White House on April 29, 1962, President John F. Kennedy paid tribute to Jefferson: “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, human knowledge, the people who gathered in the White House, probably ordered by Thomas Jefferson alone.

Who is Abraham Lincoln?

The presidency of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, mainly coincides with the American Civil War. Lincoln was born to poor and largely self-taught parents, and he was qualified to be a lawyer in 1836. From 1834-42, Lincoln sat in the state legislature and was then elected to Congress in 1846 while representing the Whigs. He joined the New Republican Party in 1856 and served as presidential candidate in 1860.

Undated photo of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States. |Photo source: AFP

His blatant opposition to slavery during his campaign was a crisis, and his victory caused not everyone to favor the abolition of slavery. The Civil War broke out in 1861, and Lincoln believed it was the responsibility of maintaining the alliance. In January 1863, he issued a declaration of liberation to free all slaves – an important gesture that emphasized that the civil war and the struggle of the union at that time was the war to end slavery.

Lincoln preserved the best remembering of the alliance during the American Civil War, even if it meant taking on more power than any president before him. His role as a liberator of the enslaved people not only earned him the nickname of the great liberator, but also gave him a call that continues to this day, not only among his fellow countrymen, but among others in other countries.

Lincoln’s patented invention

Lincoln’s skilled boatman once had a stranded boat fallen. He did this by moving the goods and drilled a temporary hole to get the backrest out. During his tenure in the U.S. Congress from 1847-49, he once noticed that a captain hired wooden boards and empty barrels to lift his stranded ships from the sandbars of the river.

These events were inspiration for Lincoln’s invention, a device used for the buoy shoals. In theory, Lincoln’s adjustable buoyancy air chamber can be built into or added to any boat. In principle, these can be placed in the water and expanded to lift the boat up the barrier in the water.

Lincoln filed his patent on March 10, 1849, for 52 years Jefferson made scientific contributions. On May 22, a patent titled “Shode Buoy” was issued. Lincoln also created the patented model with the help of Springfield mechanic Walter Davies. Lincoln remains the only U.S. president with his own patent.

Lincoln’s patented model of invention. | Image source: David and Jessie Cowhig/Flickr

Lincoln’s scientific heritage

Lincoln’s invention never came into being, and there was no evidence that he even tried to put the idea into production. Although there are still questions about whether this is a useful invention, it does have a concept – scientifically qualitative. However, the execution is wrong because of the complex system of poles, pulleys, ropes and bags that make it a tedious device.

However, it is confusing that the details about Lincoln becoming the only president with his own patent are not so well-known. Although Lincoln is Lincoln, there are countless studies on almost every aspect of his life, character, and presidency. More importantly, even some famous biography completely ignores this part of Lincoln’s life.

Lincoln conceived and applied for the fact that inventions were invented without any real scientific training, which may require more attention. If the invention is simpler and more practical, it can even release ships trapped after being captured by the river bank. It is well known that the great liberators continued to play a key role in the role of freeing people during their presidency and took several steps to address slavery.