Presidential first

According to the book I'm listening to right now, Abraham Lincoln is the only man who served as president of the U.S. who has been issued a patent.

Harper's Weekly blogged about it on April 6, 1861. OK, it's really an editorial, but it has a bloggy nature.
AMONG the registered patents in the Patent Office at Washington is one for buoying vessels through shallow waters, taken out some years ago by Abraham Lincoln, of Springfield, Illinois. ... Mr. Lincoln has not had the satisfaction of seeing his patent in use on the Mississippi or its tributaries.

But it has fallen to his lot to be in command of a ship of uncommon burden on a voyage of uncommon danger. It devolves upon him to navigate the ship of state through shallows of unprecedented peril, and over flats of unparalleled extent. The difficulty is how to prevent her grounding and becoming a wreck.