The Art of Invention - Patent Models and Their Makers

xii, 132p., an unusual coffee-table item, printed to the usual selling-point specifications: large (10x10 inches, check), presswork on glazed alkaline paperstock (check), soundly hardbound and jacketed (check & check), and worth opening (check again). In this case, amid a plethora of weirdly familiar curiosities (recognizable because soon developed further), is shown (in doublespread colorphoto) an invention by none other than Abraham Lincoln, patent applied for with scale model in 1849, of a "New Improved Manner of Buoying Vessels Over Shoals" (see index). Also find a number of early Thomas Edison efforts, some of which took commercial form. Book is hardbound in white cloth boards gilt and enclosed in the dust jacket. Book itself is fine all around, the dj is a little edgeworn: sound, clean and unmarked in any way.