Monday answer
Gary Smyth
The item was the polygraph. Not the truth kind, the many writing kind. Lee got the answer but, maybe, not the item. A large forehead gold star if he did for being first and using the former definition in order to keep the thread alive. Frederick got the answer but he split his bet. A small gold star owing to the split.
The polygraph I was looking for is a portable wood and metal adaptation of the pantograph, it was a 1:1 ratio letter duplicating machine. Jefferson used a two pen model. Jefferson was a prolific writer and this machine reproduced letters to the point that the writing was indistinguishable from the original if the pen nibs were matched. In fact, only the indicators of mailing is sometimes used as the identifying the difference between the original and the copy (assuming the original was the one that was mailed). As Jefferson explained to John Adams in 1822:
�I happened to turn to my letter-list some time ago, and a curiosity was excited to count those received in a single year. It was the year before the last. I found the number to be one thousand two hundred and sixty-seven, many of them requiring answers of elaborate research, and all to be answered with due attention and consideration. Take an average of this number for a week or a day, and I will repeat the question suggested by other considerations in mine of the 1st. Is this life?�
Imagine the WoodCentral administrators personally responding to each inquiry on this site.
Moreover, Jefferson preferred not to rely on others to do his copying. In 1804 he told William A. Burwell, a young Virginian who was about to become his presidential secretary, that �the office itself is more in the nature of an Aid de camp than a mere Secretary. The writing is not considerable, because I write my own letters and copy them."
The picture is of President Thomas Jefferson's polygraph, made by Hawkins and Peale. Patented by John Isaac Hawkins in 1803, a polygraph's pens create simultaneous copies of a writer's manuscript. Jefferson acquired his first polygraph in 1804 and suggested improvements to Charles Willson Peale, owner of the American rights. The correspondence continued for more than 20 years, almost to the end of Jefferson�s life. He had no end of ideas�among them, adding drawers, modifying the spiral springs that supported the apparatus, changing the size and mountings of the inkwells, and improving the pens. Peale adopted most of the suggestions and usually sent Jefferson a new polygraph incorporating them, often taking back the previous one.
Jefferson owned several polygraphs, and replaced them as improvements were incorporated into the design. A prolific letter writer, he called the polygraph "the finest invention of the present age."
Hint leads: Charles Willson Peale was a painter of George Washington.
Jefferson used the machines so much that he practically wore them out. With his suggestions new machines were given as replacements.
Xerox was the developer (Stanford Research was the inventor) of the Graphical User Interface and the XEROX PARC development team was forced by their management to give it to Apple because in one of the great corporate blunders of all time, then Xerox management believed the use or licensing of the GIU for computers, while maybe of some use, it was not their business.
