Benjamin Dearborn (1754–1838) was a printer and mechanical inventor in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Boston, Massachusetts in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His inventions include the gold standard balance,[1] spring scale,[2] grist mill, candlestick, ballot box,[3] perspective drawing machine,[4] letter-press,[5] "musical board for the instruction of the blind," thermoscope,[6] vibrating steelyard balance,[7] and perpendicular lift.[8]
- ^ Columbian Centinel; Feb. 25, 1804.
- ^ National cyclopaedia of American biography, v.4, p.473.
- ^ Murphy D. Smith, David Borodin. Due reverence: antiques in the possession of the American Philosophical Society. Volume 203 of Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society. DIANE Publishing, 1992; p.68. Includes illustrations of the ballot boxes.
- ^ Description of a Simple Machine for Drawing in Perspective. Universal Asylum 1 (February 1791), 67-68. Cited in: Wendy Bellion. "The Mechanization of Likeness in Jeffersonian America". MIT Communications Forum.
- ^ "A plan of those parts of Boston, and the towns in its vicinity, with the waters and flats adjacent, which are immediately or remotely connected with the contemplated design of erecting perpetual tide-mills. Printed and coloured typographically, in the new constructed letter-press, lately invented by Benjamin Dearborn. Boston, Feb. 1814".
- ^ American Apollo, December 4, 1794.
- ^ Philadelphia Gazette, March 26, 1800.
- ^ Boston Daily Advertiser; Sept. 25, 1817.