Benjamin Dearborn

Benjamin Dearborn (1754–1838) was a printer and mechanical inventor in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Boston, Massachusetts in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His inventions include the gold standard balance,spring scale, grist mill, candlestick, ballot box, perspective drawing machine, letter-press, "musical board for the instruction of the blind," thermoscope, vibrating steelyard balance, and perpendicular lift.

Dearborn was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Ruth Rogers (d.1791) and Benjamin Dearborn (1725-1755), a Harvard-educated doctor and descendant of Cornelius Van Ness Dearborn.

He trained as a printer with Daniel Fowle in Portsmouth. In May 1776, he became the publisher of the Freeman's Journal, or New Hampshire Gazette. While in Portsmouth he also ran a school; organized an "intelligence office;" sold Beverly Corduroy, India goods, real estate; and attempted a singing group.

In the early 1790s he moved to Milk Street, Boston, where he continued inventing. Along with Paul Revere, Jeremy Belknap and others, he founded "The Committee on Machines" of the Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society in 1794. The same year he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1797 Dearborn advertised as a surveyor and planner.

In 1818 he "invented a mode of propelling wheel carriages by steam, well calculated for the conveyance of the mail and any number of passengers, and which will be perfectly secure from robbers on the highway." He exhibited a "perpetual diary" in the first exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association in 1837.

He was a member of the American Philosophical Society and the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association; and a benefactor of the Boston Dispensary.

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