What you say in one of your letters of my grandfather’s being considered by a great many persons as a theorist, a man of projects, an innovator, set me to thinking how far there might be truth in these views of his character. He certainly had a good deal of ingenuity in contrivance—a good deal of...

I have one of the Scotch threshing machines nearly finished. it is copied exactly from a model mr Pinckney sent me, only that I have put the whole works (except the horse wheel) into a single frame moveable from one field to another on the two axles of a waggon.

indeed New York, by it’s private and public exertions is setting examples to us all of the wisest employments of our energies. we need however a preliminary lesson from her book, how to get rich enough to follow her great examples.

certainly so great and growing a population, spread over such an extent of country, with such a variety of climates, of productions, of arts, must enlarge their language, to make it answer it’s purpose of expressing all ideas, the new as...

if nature has made any one thing less susceptible, than all others, of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an Idea; which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of...

the plough is to the farmer, what the wand is to the Sorcerer.

where a new invention is supported by well known principles & promises to be useful, it ought to be tried.

I think it the finest invention of the present age, and so much superior to the copying machine that the latter will never be continued a day by any one who tries the Polygraph.

I have imagined and executed a mould-board which may be mathematically demonstrated to be perfect, as far as perfection depends on mathematical principles ... it is on the principle of two wedges combined at right angles, the first in the direct line of the furrow to raise the turf gradually, the...

there has been a lamp called the Cylinder lamp, lately invented here. it gives a light equal as is thought to that of six or eight candles. it requires olive oil, but it’s consumption is not great.