Inventions of Thomas Jefferson By Aaron Levett

Why an Inventor? Many of you know Thomas Jefferson as just that rich republican guy who was our 3 rd president. In fact, inventing things was just one of his hobbies. He rarely got paid, because he never patented his inventions. He wanted people to use them and improve on them, without expense.

Used to send messages from one person to another. Only given to Jeffersons relatives and best friends. How it worked, was that you would rotate the wheel until it spelled out the message you wanted to. Then you would have to look a line or 2 above to form a secret code. Then you would send someone a message saying AGHHV, which they would then look at the cipher to se it read: WHAAT.

All wheel ciphers contained the letters in the same order. This was so messages would not get confused. Jefferson only gave these to people he could trust not to be spies. As you see, in the picture the cipher reads COOLJEFFERSONWHEELCIPHER, but the sent message would read: NWPNHKKRWYKWKYGSJILGZDEN

It is believed that Thomas Jefferson served the first macaroni and cheese, with the newly invented macaroni machine!!!

The Moldboard of Least Resistance A farming tool. It was used so you could do more work with soil, without using as much of your energy. Basically, it was a more efficient plow. He never got a patent for this, and he just gave copies away to his family and friends.

Jeffersons rotating bookshelf Bookshelf that rotates (obviously). Holds 5 books. The rectangles could be folded in to form a storage box. They then attached to the base. Now, we just use our boring old plain bookshelf.

Jefferson designed his own tombstone, with the shape and specific words he wanted written on it. It reads: Here was buried, Thomas Jefferson, author of the declaration of American independence of the state of Virginia for religious freedom and father of the university of Virginia. He left out his presidency on his tomb.

Thomas Jefferson used his newly invented automatic double doors to use at the front of Monticello. When one door was opened, a complex series of chains opened the other door.

Jeffersons polygraph was a letter copier. As you see, Mr. Jeffersons polygraph was written and copied. Jefferson copied over 18,000 letters that he sent and received. Now a days, a polygraph is called a lie detector (dont get confused:)

Jeffersons wheel cipher is my favorite invention. It is so complex, but in a so simple fashion. It took so little to make, but so much mind work to come up with the idea.

I think that it is smart to use this, so enemys do not steal your message, though I dont feel it would be a good idea today. Too many others would have the invention, and letters would be stolen, and used for evil.