Report of the Commissioner of Patents, for the year 1849
Annual report of the U.S. Patent Office for 1849, printed in 1850 by the Senate's printers in Washington and submitted to the 31st Congress, with technical essays by Commissioner Thomas Ewbank and a description of Abraham Lincoln's method of lifting vessels over shoals, addressed to legislators and inventors. The wood-engraved figures mix letter-keyed mechanical diagrams of vanes, blades and shafts with outline and hatched studies of bird wings and single feathers, giving designers numbered geometric schematics, close-grained line shading and clean ornithological line work.
