Benjamin Banneker

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Roughsoul1991

Senior Member
Sep 17, 2016
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#1
First Clock made in America by Benjamin Banneker an African American hero and great example of what made America so exceptional in the area of invention, scientific discovery, and competitive markets always pushing innovation. Clocks are still produced in his name to this day.

In 1751, Banneker borrowed a pocket watch from a well-to-do neighbor; he took it apart and studied it’s workings. He made a drawing of each component, then reassembled the watch and returned it, fully functioning, to its owner. From his drawings Banneker then proceeded to carve, out of wood, enlarged replicas of each part.

Calculating the proper number of teeth for each gear and the necessary relationships between the gears, he completed construction of a working wooden clock in 1753 that kept accurate time and struck the hours for over 50 years.

https://banneker1753.com/benjamin-banneker/

Benjamin Banneker (sometimes spelled Bannaker) (1731-1806) was an African-American mathematician, surveyor, astronomer, and publisher of a popular almanac. Banneker wrote a now-famous letter to Thomas Jefferson on August 19, 1791, arguing eloquently that "... however variable we may be in Society or religion, however diversifyed in Situation or colour, we are all of the Same Family, and Stand in the Same relation to him [God]."1

In his reply to Banneker on August 30, Jefferson wrote,

No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colours of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence both in Africa and America. ... I have taken the liberty of sending your almanac to Monsieur de Condorcet ... because I considered it as a document to which your whole colour had a right for their justification against the doubts which have been entertained of them.2

The same day, Jefferson wrote to the Marquis de Condorcet:

I am happy to be able to inform you that we have now in the United States a negro, the son of a black man born in Africa, and of a black woman born in the United States, who is a very respectable Mathematician. I procured him to be employed under one of our chief directors in laying out the new federal city on the Patowmac, and in the intervals of his leisure, while on that work, he made an Almanac for the next year, which he sent me in his own handwriting, and which I inclose to you. I have seen very elegant solutions to Geometrical problems by him. Add to this that he is a very worthy and respectable member of society. He is a free man.3

https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/benjamin-banneker