The first year he constructed the necessary machinery to manufacture his clocks, and the second year he produced 1,000 clocks. In 1793, Terry moved to Plymouth, Connecticut, and by the turn of the century, he was dedicated to the production of wooden movement clocks.Įntering into contract with several merchants in 1807, Terry agreed to produce 4,000 wooden clocks within a three-year period. Banneker’s feelings on this lukewarm response are not documented.A native of East Windsor, Connecticut, Eli Terry had his start in the clock-making business in a series of apprenticeships where he manufactured both brass and wooden movement clocks. The letter reached Jefferson, who responded “by expressing his ambivalence about slavery and endorsing Banneker’s accomplishments,” the Library of Congress writes. Emphasizing the discrepancy between the rhetoric of equality found in the Declaration of Independence and the physical fact of slavery, Banneker denounced the institution that he called “that State of tyrannical thraldom, and inhuman captivity.” He spoke not as a representative slave but as a more fortunate “brother” of slaves, obliged to use his abilities to advance the cause of others of his race. Justifying his right to speak to the secretary of state on such a topic, Banneker argued from moral compulsion based on recognition of deep injustice. Ray writes:Ĭlaiming that he simply intended to direct to Jefferson “as a present, a copy of an Almanack which I have calculated for the Succeeding year,” Banneker wrote that his “Sympathy and affection for brethren” led him “unexpectedly and unavoidable” to take the opportunity to condemn endemic prejudice and the “groaning captivity and cruel oppression” of slavery. Included with that almanac was a now-famous letter to Jefferson. secretary of state (and, as history records, a slaveholder). In 1791, when Banneker was fifty-nine, he sent a copy of the almanac for 1792 to Thomas Jefferson, who was then the U.S. He wrote to Thomas Jefferson–and Jefferson wrote back It “also included commentaries, literature, and fillers that had a political and humanitarian purpose,” writes PBS, such as an excerpt from an anti-slavery poem in the 1793 edition. His almanac predicted eclipses and other astronomical events, offered medical information and listed the tides, the Library writes. Many of those insights were captured in the Almanac or his other writings. “There, he taught himself astronomy by watching the stars and learned advanced mathematics from borrowed textbooks.”Īs a gentleman farmer, Banneker had many opportunities to examine the natural world around him. “Banneker spent most of his life on his family’s 100-acre farm outside Baltimore,” writes the Library of Congress. ![]() He was also a talented astronomer–a skill that proved useful in producing the Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia Almanac and Ephemeris, which he published from 1791 to 1802. He produced one of the United States’ first almanacsīanneker, whose schooling and scientific training was minimal, had a clear talent for mathematics and machines, writes the Library of Congress. ![]() People traveled to see the clock, which was made entirely out of hand-carved wooden parts.Ī page from Banneker's almanac, one of the first to be produced in the United States. This creation, which is believed to be the first clock built in America, made him famous, according to the Benjamin Banneker Memorial’s website. ![]() The clock continued to run until it was destroyed in a fire forty years later.” Still, based on these two devices, PBS writes, “Banneker constructed a striking clock almost entirely out of wood, based on his own drawings and calculations. He built America’s first home-grown clock–out of woodīanneker was 22 in 1753, writes PBS, and he’d “seen only two timepieces in his lifetime–a sundial and a pocket watch.” At the time, clocks weren’t common in the United States. Here are three you may not have heard about. While it’s (probably) not true that he saved the plan of Washington, D.C., Banneker did make some important contributions to early America. Today is the 286th birthday of one of early America’s most fascinating figures.īenjamin Banneker, born on this day in 1731, is remembered for producing one of America’s earliest almanacs and what may have been the country’s first natively produced clock. Banneker, who was black, had “significant accomplishments and correspondence with prominent political figures profoundly influenced how African Americans were viewed during the Federal period,” writes the Library of Congress.īecause of his accomplishments and the unique place he occupied in early American society, Banneker is well-remembered–perhaps too well, given the number of myths surrounding his life.
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