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Abraham Lincoln the Early Adopter
Hugh Pickens writes "On the 200th anniversary of his birth, President Abraham Lincoln's popular image as a log-splitting bumpkin is being re-assessed as historians have discovered that Lincoln had an avid interest in cutting-edge technology and its applications. During the war, Lincoln haunted the telegraph office (which provided the instant-messaging of its day) for the latest news from the front; he encouraged weapons development and even tested some new rifles himself on the White House lawn; and he is the only US president to hold a patent (No. 6469, granted May 22, 1849). It was for a device to lift riverboats over shoals. 'He not only created his own invention but had ideas for other inventions, such as an agricultural steam plow and a naval steam ram, [and] was fascinated by patent cases as an attorney and also by new innovations during the Civil War,' says Jason Emerson, author of Lincoln the Inventor. But Lincoln's greatest contribution to the war effort was his use of the telegraph. When Lincoln took office the White House had no telegraph connection. Lincoln 'developed the modern electronic leadership model, says Tom Wheeler, author of Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph To Win the Civil War. At a time when electricity was a vague scientific concept and sending signals through wires was 'mind boggling,' Lincoln was fascinated by the telegraph and developed it into a political and military tool that allowed him to project himself to the front to monitor and track what was going on. 'If he were alive today, we'd call him an early adopter,' says Wheeler."
If he was alive today, we'd call him a zombie...
Why always the painfully stupid condescension?
Communicating science (or history) well to a general audience doesn't require this. See Carl Sagan. If anything, such unnecessary analogies make things *less* clear.
Another positive tick towards my overarching theory: If knowledge is power, then communication is both your greatest weapon and your most vital line of supplies.
Demented But Determined.
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bljefferson.htm
Jefferson was a tinkerer who realized that every design could be improved. The same mind he dedicated to helping to create our novel system of government, he applied to physical science.
When Lincoln took office the White House had no telegraph connection. Lincoln 'developed the modern electronic leadership model'
Is that what kids are calling it nowadays? I must be out of date - I was raised to call it micromanagement.
President Abraham Lincoln's popular image as a log-splitting bumpkin is being re-assessed
I doubt any serious Lincoln scholar would ever say Lincoln was a "log-splitting bumpkin". He was a brilliant, self educated man with a ferocious curiosity and probably one of the highest IQs of any president we've ever had. The guy who managed to end slavery, preserve the Union, AND assist in ushering in modern medical techniques on the battlefield a log-splitting bumpkin? Yeah, sure.
It's been said that because he was such a deep and complex personality, our society sees Lincoln not necessarily as who he was, but he is a reflection of our current state of mind as a nation. When we began to focus on racial issues, he was an obvious focal point, when depression became more widely known, he was thought to have been depressed, gay rights bring him up as possibly being our first gay president... and slashdot calls him an early adopter.
He was probably our greatest American president ever.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
This looks like another incarnation of the "Lincoln was _______" phenomena. Apparently Lincoln was so awesome that he has to embody every singly significant idea or social event since his death.
he held racist views, but he also said of black persons "but in the right to eat the bread without leave of anybody else which his own hand earns, he is my equal" in other words, he didn't let his prejudice get in the way of policy.
Lincoln held opinions not very different from those of the majority of his racist countrymen. Even if slavery was wrong, "there is a physical difference between the white and black races that will for ever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality." His solution was a form of ethnic cleansing: shipping blacks off to Liberia, or Haiti, or Central America â" anywhere as long as it wasnâ(TM)t the United States.
Lincoln's views may have started to change once he saw how bravely black troops fought for the Union cause, but even at the time of his death, he was willing to leave the fate of emancipated slaves in the hands of bigoted state legislators. "Whether Lincoln ever went beyond being an anti-slavery white supremacist," George Fredrickson writes, "is a question that is difficult to resolve."
So should we tear down his memorial on the National Mall? The answer to this question may surprise you.
*** "What hath god wrought" is considered to be the first documented telegraph message.
...unless you read the wikipedia on Thomas Jefferson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
There are none of Thomas Jefferson's patents on the page. In fact it doesn't even mention his involvement in the patent act of 1790, http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH40/walter40.html
He invented a Moldboard Plow Of Least Resistance, Wheel Cipher, Portable Copying Press, and an improved polygraph for copying handwritten text.
http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~meg3c/classes/tcc313/200Rprojs/jefferson_invent/invent.html
I've seen plenty of liberals defend him as saying that he wanted to "protect them", which is just as sensible as saying Hitler wanted to protect the Jews.
In all fairness, I don't recall FDR having Japanese Americans killed.
But yes, we tend to forget the negative or parts. It turns out that Lincon was pretty big on racism, told racist jokes about blacks, thought that interracial marriage was wrong, and that whites were the better race, all this despite believing that slavery was morally wrong. But here's the catch, if he wasn't still a racist, he wouldn't have been elected because the idea that the races really are equal would be considered far too radical.
Is 1863 the year of the Linux desktop?
"It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers." -- 4 days before he was assassinated
I myself, would have gone a step further and stripped the right from the very stupid (joe six-packs)
...for possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. He even wrote a letter to the Hohner Harmonica company stating how he loved to sit on his porch, smoking "sweet hemp" from a corncob pipe and playing his harmonica. He very likely smoked it even while in the Whitehouse, or on or about the Whitehouse grounds, since hemp smoking was rather commonplace in the mid-1800's.
>>>In all fairness, I don't recall FDR having Japanese Americans killed.
"Some Japanese Americans died in the camps due to inadequate medical care and the emotional stresses they encountered. Several were killed by military guards for allegedly resisting orders." "These Japanese Americans, half of whom were children, were incarcerated for up to 4 years, without due process of law or any factual basis, in bleak, remote camps surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards."
FDR also arrested white Americans who stood in his way - the most famous one being Henry Ford (for not complying with the NRA's price minimums), but Ford could hire enough lawyers to persuade FDR to drop the case. Others were not so fortunate. FDR was a dark, dark man and now historians digging through the archives are just now discovering how dark he was.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
There was no such thing as conflict of interest back then. The real reason Jefferson did not patent is likely the same reason inventor Benjamin Franklin did not patent. They chose to share their ideas for the benefit of all - what we would call public domain. Franklin was already the wealthiest man in America, so he didn't need the cash.
And Jefferson was very very poor, the equivalent of $100,000 in debt in today's terms, but he still preferred to give things away. Jefferson's personal library was donated as the foundation for the Second Library of Congress. (The first was burned to the ground by the British.)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The parent post certainly expresses what we today consider racist opinions, but they are what Lincoln thought, they are a direct response to its parent post, and it is not a troll.
Mods -- just because history is racist does not make reports on history racist.
Infuriate left and right
P.S. I just reviewed the video again. I did see ONE white face. Still not a "large amount" as the grandparent falsely claimed. Check it out for ye self. Listen to the hate speech (and yes that is the proper term): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwQWuQVE6sw
"Can't we all just...get along?"
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
At some point it used to be acceptable to use the term "colored" as well. Not sure when all that changed.
It occurs to me as strange every time I hear the letters "NAACP". I understand that it would have been strange to re-name the org "NAAAAP" when the P.C. terms shifted from "colored" to "African American", but I think that's the only remaining place where the term "colored" is still appropriate when referring to race...
(As a side note, there are a few interesting scenes in Steven King's dark tower series where a "modern" white guy is conversing with a black woman from a few decades back. As would likely be the case, she's very upset when he calls her "black" and insists on the term colored, making him somewhat uncomfortable.)
What does all this have to do with Lincoln being an early adopter of tech again?
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Personally I would call him 'Mr President'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
he hotheads in the south who seceded before he even took the oath of office, and the even hotter heads in South Carolina who started the fighting -- those are the idiots who started the war.
My question is this: why is it treason for a state to want to secede? I mean, it's a shitty thing, but, if the elected leaders of a state wanted to secede, then wouldn't it make the USA a sort of an empire to trample that state into remaining in the union?
As far as Fort Sumter goes, Lincoln was given the choice of removing the troops and letting the South have the base. He told, rightly, the south to go pound sand and organized a relief mission of the fort and a federal blockade instead.
The fact of the matter is this, the Civil War was a blatant act of imperialism by the north, upon the south, a war that was pushed into all of its horrors by Abraham Lincoln, and he was right to do it. The great lesson of the civil war is that there are times when sovereignty must be set aside for a greater good, and that some imperialism is justifiable.
IT was right for Abraham Lincoln to destroy the South and end slavery, and, if anyone is like the Lincoln of our day, it may well be that it was right for George Bush to invade Iraq and destroy the Baath Party.
This is my sig.