(Jrt)
Benjamin Banneker
Benjamin Banneker is an astronomer, manufacturer of clocks and U.S. publisher, born on 9 November 1731 to Maryland and died on 9 October 1806.
He is the son and grand-son of former African slaves. The original name of the family is or Bannakay Banna Ka. His father, Robert Bannakay, is known to have built several dams on rivers. At age 21, he discovered the patent for a watch its neighbors, borrows it to transcribe the pattern of manufacture. Then he makes wooden replicas of each piece. He eventually commercialize. One of his clients is Joseph Ellicott, a surveyor who needs a clock to make very precise calculations of its location of stars in the sky, which it uses to locate its position on landmines. The latter, impressed by the work of Banneker, it lends books on mathematics and astronomy.
Between 1792 and 1797, he published Benjamin Banneker's Almanac, which for several years to prove to Americans that blacks are intellectually inferior to whites.
In 1791, he was called to assist Andrew and Joseph Ellicott and Pierre Charles L'Enfant to build the new U.S. capital, Washington.
That same year he decided to take the defense of black Americans, by writing to Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence. At that time, blacks are regarded as an inferior race, unable to understand the meaning of citizenship. Jefferson approves the words of Banneker, but does not aid in its struggle for the abolition of slavery.
Read also Alexander Graham Bell
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