I grew up near the C&O Canal and always walk part of it whenever I’m back home. So historical footnotes on the subject tend to get my attention.

How is it that nobody ever taught us this one?

At the beginnings of the C&O and the Erie canals, and after traveling to Niagara Falls where he saw a ship run aground and all that had to be done about that, one bright young man foresaw the problem in the canals if the water should get too low in one section.

So he thought up a device to lift them. Someone made a model of it for him and he submitted it to the Patent Office, where it got approved.

The inventor?

Abraham Lincoln.