Lincoln's device was composed of large bellows attached to the sides of a boat that were expandable due to air chambers.

The invention stemmed from Lincoln's experiences ferrying travelers and carrying freight on the Great Lakes and some midwestern rivers.

[1] In 1860, Lincoln wrote his autobiography and recounted that while in his late teens he took a flatboat down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers from his home in Indiana to New Orleans while employed as a hired hand.

Before Offutt's boat could reach the Illinois River, it got hung up on a milldam at the Old Sangamon town seven miles northwest of Springfield.

[2] Lincoln took action, unloading some cargo to right the boat, then drilling a hole in the bow with a large auger borrowed from the local cooperage.

The boat's captain ordered his crew to gather together all the empty barrels, boxes, and loose planks and force these objects under the sides of the steamboat to buoy it over the shallow water.

[2] This event, along with the Offutt's boat/milldam incident, prompted Lincoln to start thinking about how to lift vessels over river obstructions and shoals.

[8] When crew members knew their ship was stuck, or at risk of hitting a shallow, Lincoln's invention could be activated, which would inflate accordion-shaped air chambers along the sides of the watercraft to lift it above the water's surface, providing enough clearance to avoid a disaster.

[10] This model (built and assembled with the assistance of a mechanic from Springfield named Walter Davis[10]) that was originally taken to the United States Patent and Trademark Office in Washington[11] is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution.

[12] After reporting to Washington for his two-year term in Congress beginning March 1847, Lincoln retained Zenas C. Robbins, patent attorney.

Paul Johnston, curator of the maritime history department at the Smithsonian, came to the conclusion that the version Lincoln made was not practical because it required too much force to make it operate as intended.

Patent law in the United States has a constitutional foundation which is supported by the country's founders, and was viewed as an indispensable engine for economic development.

has secured to the inventor, for a limited time, the exclusive use of his invention; and thereby added to the interest of genius in the discovery and production of new and useful things.

[24] He won an unreported patent infringement case for the defendant early in his legal career titled Parker v. Hoyt.