The ultimate tinkerer and putterer, Jefferson was always noting things that could make life easier and then adapting them for his own use. The devices shown here are but a small sample of Jefferson's ingenuity.

An author of more than 25,000 letters during his lifetime, Jefferson devised a polygraph (letter-writing machine) to cut down writing time. This ingenious device could hold up to four pens, each attached to the others via arms. While he wrote using one pen, the other pens allowed him to make up to four copies at one time -- the other three pens duplicating each original pen stroke so exactly that it was next to impossible to determine which letter was written by his hand and which by the machine's.

While serving as Secretary of State, Jefferson devised a method to encode and decode messages, the wheel cipher. The device consisted of twenty-six cylindrical wooden pieces, each threaded onto an iron spindle. The letters of the alphabet were inscribed on the edge of each wheel in a random order. Turning these wheels, words could be scrambled and unscrambled.

One of Virginia's largest planters, Jefferson considered agriculture to be a science and he studied it with as much zeal and commitment as he did many other subjects. He introduced a variety of plants to the United States, and frequently exchanged farming advice and seeds with other planters. The sheer size of his plantations also led him to experiment with machinery that would make farming more efficient. One result of that experimentation was his "mouldboard of least resistance" for a plow The design not only allowed the plow to be pulled through the soil with relative ease, it was also easily reproduced, meaning it could be made with relative ease by almost anyone with even the most rudimentary of woodworking skills.

An avid violinist who frequently played in quartets, he designed and built a special rotating music stand to hold the music for four musicians (or when not being used for music could double as a four-sided bookstand).

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This page was last updated on August 30, 2018.