Ashbrook Center in Florida

Did you know that Abraham Lincoln was an inventor? In 1849 he patented a device for floating stranded boats off river shoals. He is the only president to hold a patent.

Not much is said about Lincoln’s fascination with technology or the rare non-political lectures in which he praises “Discoveries and Inventions.”

You are invited to join Peter Schramm, Executive Director of the Ashbrook Center, as he speaks about this often neglected subject.

Perhaps in this age of the Internet, it may be good to allow Lincoln to remind us why writing and printing are the “great invention of the world,” how this allowed freedom of thought to be established, and allowed men to “rise to equality,” and what it has to do with man’s capacity for self-government.