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Thomas Jefferson: Scientist, Inventor, Gadgeteer
Hugh Pickens writes "Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, whose signing we celebrate today, was considered an expert in architecture, civil engineering, geography, mathematics, ethnology, anthropology, mechanics, and the sciences. Although Jefferson never failed to acknowledge that in science he was 'an amateur,' Jefferson's home at Monticello was filled with examples of his scientific philosophy. An inventor and gadgeteer of great ingenuity, Jefferson's practical innovations or improvements on others inventions included: the swivel chair, the polygraph, letter press, hemp break. pedometer, mouldboard plow, sulky, folding chair, dumb-waiter, double acting doors, and a seven day clock. Throughout his life Jefferson experimented in agriculture with studies in crop rotation, soil cultivation, animal breeding, pest control, agricultural implements and improvement of seeds. Jefferson promoted science as President by recommending to Congress a coast survey to accurately chart the coast of America that later evolved into the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. Jefferson's expert testimony before Congress led to the establishment of the Naval Observatory and the Hydrographic Office and Jefferson's report to Congress on a plan of coinage and weights and measures based on the decimal system was expanded into the National Bureau of Standards. Jefferson never applied for a patent, which was consistent in his belief in the natural right of all mankind to share useful improvements without restraint."
Now I know who to blame for my dizziness. Damn you and your fun contraptions!
He also raped a slave (at least per current definitions). Let's not get too stupid in our idol worship here.
where the fuck is the higgs boson news, you moron editors?
Yeah... really awesome human being.
Being such a influential and powerful person, it is unfortunate that as president Jefferson didn't go on to dismantle the patent system since he saw for himself that 'useful improvements should be shared without restraint".
It would have saved us all from the broken system we have today where big corps sue each other until one leaves or theres a cross licensing agreement in place to block new players from entering the market.
"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."
"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter."
"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
-- Thomas Jefferson
Articles are user submitted. Why don't you go a write a blurb and a good one. No one will RTFM anyway.
Defacto atheist and slave owner. Not that the two are related, of course.
Is a Pedometer some sort of Pedophile detector?
What the hell is a "hemp break pedometer"?
a successful terrorist, otherwise known as a revolutionary.
... he was never able to satisfactorily distinguish between "principle" and 'practice".
As in the principle of being opposed to slavery while in practice shagging the property.
I read somewhere that at the beginning of their revolutionary path Jefferson and many of the founding fathers were using various alias names and operated via proxies to conceal their true identity and goals. Ok, if they had been more open of their goals and identities they would have been shot and not remembered. Right to be anonymous, maybe it should have been written into constitution.
maybe EFF could use that as a propaganda tool
"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have." -- Thomas Jefferson
In the spirit of Independence Day, there's an article on WSJ about what life was like in 1776, in case you want to see just how much has changed since Jefferson's times and why we no longer have Jeffersons.
Are you really stating that having an accurate map of the territory that falls under it is not an interest of your federal government?
So, like, Jefferson didn't write the Declaration of Independence, but, he like, discovered it!
The folding chair with rounded corners.
Ba-zing!
Jefferson's position on the granting of patents [1]changed through the years. In his article "Godfather of American Invention," Silvio Bedini notes that in 1787 Jefferson's opposition to monopoly in any form led him to oppose patents.[2] But by 1789, Jefferson's firm opposition had weakened. Writing to James Madison, Jefferson said he approved the Bill of Rights as far as it went, but would like to see the addition of an article specifying that "Monopolies may be allowed to person for their own productions in literature, and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not exceeding --- years, but for no longer term and for no other purpose."[3] Also in 1789, while Jefferson was still in Paris, the first patent act was introduced during the first session of Congress and enacted into law April 10, 1790. Under the new law, the Secretaries of War and State and the Attorney General constituted a three-man review board, with the Secretary of State (Jefferson), playing the leading role. Two months after the law was passed, Jefferson remarked it had "given a spring to invention beyond his conception."[4]
http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/patents
Thomas Jefferson was the first patent examiner and granted quite a few patents.
your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through
Benjamin Franklin, another Founding Father of the US, was quite the technologist. Read more at Tikalon Blog.
It was not quite hyperbole when JFK jokingly addressed a group of Nobel winners at the White House: "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House - with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."
Man, he accomplished so much, yet still found time to regularly impregnate the help!
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
If you are going to mention the coastal survey, why not also mention the Lewis and Clark expedition? The "Corps of Discovery" was a huge cartographic, biological, geological, and sociological enterprise. They took the best scientific equipment they could, charted rivers and mountains, kept daily records, and brought back samples. They didn't know what was in the Rocky Mountains, and Jefferson told them to find Mastodons.
Lewis was Jefferson's personal secretary, and Jefferson made sure that Lewis had all the scientific training possible at the time. I'd say that pushing through the funding and planning of the mapping of the the Rocky Mountains, Missouri River and Columbia River ranks up there with the dumb waiter.
I love how people are bringing up his slave owning in the modern day. Of course it's not right by today's standards, but you know, back then it was actually kewl to own people.
Besides this isn't about his slave owning. It's about his scientific endeavors. Put all the bad things and negativity about him aside for the moment and we can talk about it later, but for now, let's talk about the kewl shit he did to help make the world a better place.
"That's right...I said it."
At the same time a young Abraham Lincoln was just starting his vampire-hunting career
Not to take anything away from the Man, but being a polymath appears to be a necessary qualification to be a national hero, one of the Founding Fathers, or the Great Leader of a country. Why is it necessary to prove that a man is a larger-than-life expert in everything?
... he sure did a great job as the author of the Patent Act and first Patent Examiner. Isn't it somewhat more reasonable to say that he never patented his own inventions because, y'know, he'd be the one examining them and granting the patent and that would be a huge ethical breach and lead to charges of corruption?
The Constitution contains a clause empowering the government to establish a system of weights and measures.
Jefferson, in part because of his experience as a surveyor using chains divided into 100 links, and also from reading 'Disme: the art of tenths by Simon Stevin' was familiar with the benefits of doing measurement calculations in decimal units, and proposed that the US adopt a decimal system of weights and measures.
Unfortunately Congress did not appreciate the usefulness of this idea and failed to act on the proposal setting a really bad precedent.
As ambassadors to France he and Ben Franklin had access to French intellectuals and brought up this topic to the French. Whether the French would have developed this independently or not I don't know. Certainly they may have known about the idea from other sources.
But if Congress had heeded his ideas the US would have had a decimal measurement system before any other nation. Jefferson may also have been the catalyst for the French adoption of their decimal measurement system.
Because of Jefferson the US had the first decimal system of any type in its currency thanks to Jefferson, predating the metric system.
So please add this quote to your list:
⦠every branch to the same decimal ratio, thus bringing the calculations of the principal affairs of
life within the arithmetic of every man who can multiply and divide plain numbers.
- Thomas Jefferson
Book it.
In my visit to Montecello, the factoid that impressed me most was the meat ration of his workers (yes, slaves). It was half a pound a week! Three quarter pounder burgers are routinely on the menu now a days. Most of us work in air conditioned offices clicking keyboards and mouse. Even the blue collar workers have so many machines assisting them it is practically a walk in the park compared to the work done by Teejay's workers. But they made do with just half a pound of meat!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I feel awe at the great leadership the United States had in its first few decades. These were admirable human beings. These were great strong men who had the will to do the right thing and stand up for their values. They were so very forward thinking! They placed the good of the country and the good of people ahead of expedience.
Being an Asian Indian, I have been brought up with mythological stories that extol good values and ideal conduct. Many of these great men from the US personified these teachings, and yet were oblivious to the fact that their conduct would be held in high esteem by a certain eastern philosophy. I can especially think of George Washington, who had the all the power that one could think of and yet he had enough 'virakti' (non-attachment) to give it all up. This is among the highest teachings of Bhagwat Gita. US was especially fortunate that it serendipitously had the right kind of leadership at the time it was dearly needed. Sometime ago I saw a documentary about Andrew Jackson. Some of the things he did might be called harsh and unjustified today, but he did solve for ever the problems he dealt with.
And then there is Abraham Lincoln. What an amazing and principled person! I believe it is simple, honest and strong men like these, both among the common men and politicians that laid the foundations for the great country the US later became.
In 300 years fertility will be like a light switch. Turn it on and off as needed. People will look back at abortion as an unbelievable horror because they won't be able to understand the concept of an unwanted pregnancy.
It isn't like slavery was invented in the US. People were held in slavery since the beginning of time and still are in certain parts of the world. Heck even the 13th amendment allows it as a punishment.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
As this is also the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, we shouldn't forget that Jefferson also once exhorted "Canada will be ours, but for the marching."
This of course contributed to a false sense of military preparedness that cost the upstart Americans dearly in their invasion attempts, and which eventually indirectly resulted in the retaliatory burning down of the White House by the British and the galvanization of Canada's population in defense of its right to liberty and eventual self determination in the form of Confederation.
He may have been a brilliant inventor and constitutionalist, but he was blinded by self-righteous nationalism.
and a slave owner. fuck him. sleazy piece of shit.
Monticello is really worth a visit. I thought the clock at the main entrance to the building was fascinating. It uses weights that look like cannon balls to power the mechanism. However, there wasn't enough room for the weights to descend downward to allow the clock to run for a full week at a time. Jefferson's solution? Cut holes in the floor and allow the weights to travel down into the cellar / basement area. He decided to leave the weights exposed because boxing them in would have blocked some of the windows. However, by leaving them exposed he was able to make additional use of them - he marked the days of the week on the wall, so that the position of the weight showed the day of the week.
It's also interesting that the clock has two faces - one on the interior of the house, and the other above the main entrance on the exterior. Jefferson decided that the exterior face should only have an hour hand. Now, the reasoning given by the tour guides is that the slaves and farm hands didn't need to know the minute, only the hour - precision to the minute wasn't necessary for them. However, the more I've thought about it, I think Jefferson had a more practical reason in mind. With two hands, and from a far distance, it's difficult to make out which is the hour and which is the minute. With just an hour hand it would be easier to tell the time from a very far distance. That fits in more with his sense of invention and practicality.
Better known as 318230.
If the Texas School Board Association had its way, school pupils in Texas would never hear of Jefferson. Instead, they'd learn how great a contributor to America was (wait for it...) Phyllis Schlafly.
It is truly a strange world in which we live.
All the world's an analog stage, and digital circuits play only bit parts.
no vampire hunting? not even as a hobby?
His point is that this Separation protects religion from the state as much as the state from religion. The distinction he drew was between "actions" and "opinions", one of which is open to reason, debate and consensus, and the other only to the individual's conscience. Would that we made the same distinction between "science" and "creation", but then we'd have nothing left to talk about on /.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
along w the rest of the founders he was an avid supporter of growing hemp and smoking weed
and yes he was jailed in turkey for smuggling mandarin hemp seed
back in the day we didnt have no old school
I do not think it means what you think it means.
If Jefferson was alive today he'd be a geek. He'd probably be posting on /.
He was also a non-Christian Deist at best, who perhaps accepted a Creator but considered Jesus merely a great philosopher. Reflecting those beliefs, late in life he penned what is now called the Jefferson Bible, his own personal rewrite of the New Testament which excluded what he termed the "mystical" elements but retained the ethical and philosophical teachings of Jesus which he admired. Allegations of atheism apparently dogged him throughout his political career, and he was quite keen to keep his true existential beliefs to himself; after he penned his Bible, he sent a copy to a trusted friend, who proved to be not so trustworthy and shared it with others in Britain, causing Jefferson much anxiety that it would be publicized widely in America.
It becomes quite a bit more difficult to swallow claims that the United States were founded as a Christian nation when pivotal Thomas Jefferson was anything but. Given his minority beliefs, it also becomes easier to understand why "tyranny of the majority" was such a concern. In large part we got the Representative form of democracy that we have because Jefferson himself feared what an unrestricted "democratic" majority would do to people like him. I for one am glad that Jefferson was a closeted outcast; had he been more "transparent" about his own beliefs we might very well have wound up enduring something much more like the theocracy that some Christians claim we should have had.
It's hemp BRAKE, not break.
OP got it wrong.
Wasn't the declaration signed on the 3rd?
It was first read to the people on the 4th, and thus celebrations happen on that day, but the actual signing was the 3rd...
Thomas Jefferson: Scientist, Inventor, Gadgeteer
In Hollywood's eyes, he's also going to be a Vampire^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Werewolf Hunter!
I like when nerds try to have opinions about something other than technology. It reminds you of why that word still carries some pejorative meaning.
When I compare the group of people who started the United States of America, to the current crop of so-called "leaders" in the congress and the White House, I can't help but notice the following:
1. The current crop of "American Leaders" are made up of rent-seekers, such as lawyers
There is no "inventor" amongst the current crop of "American Leaders"
2. Very few of the founding fathers of America were rent-seekers. In fact, many of them were inventors
Thomas Jefferson wasn't the only inventor in the group, btw
Ben Franklin was another famous inventor
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Too bad it didn't happen. It'd have stopped trouble they cause nowadays (gangsta wannabe crap those punks do).
Always good to see reminders that the US is the land of the free, if you're a rich white Christian male.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
+5 points added to your Liberal White Guilt karma score.
Amidst all the cheers and applause for Jefferson, I dare to offer my opposing view.
As governor of Virginia, he failed to properly defend the state's armory and then fled in a cowardly fashion when the redcoats showed up. In effect, he handed over the weapons and ammunition needed for his state's defense to the enemy, without offering any resistance.
As secretary of state, he was utterly disloyal to President Washington and sided with France against the government of which he was a part. Fortunately, Washington, Hamilton, and Adams prevented Jefferson from doing too much damage to American foreign policy.
As president, Jefferson stripped the Navy of its capital ships at a time when Britain and France were most threatening. Then he paid off the Barbary pirates and set free those which his naval captains had captured... even ordering pirate ships to be returned. Later, the country was so poorly defended that his successor had to flee the capital to avoid capture during the War of 1812.
As president, his policy of shutting off trade with Britain and creating an economic depression did more damage than what the British had attempted to do. During his second term, he so totally lost interest in performing the duties of the presidency that he effectively turned over the operations of the government to James Madison; Madison was the de facto president in 1807 and 1808, before he was elected in 1808.
Jefferson may have had some private virtues, though I cannot name them. But he was cowardly in battle, disloyal to the president to whom he'd sworn allegiance, unwilling or unable to perform the essential duties of his office, and so ignorant of economic principles that he did more damage to the nation's economy than did our mortal enemies.