While Meriwether Lewis moves along the Wilderness Road towards his home near Charlottesville, Virginia, Thomas Jefferson and Charles Willson Peale work on perfecting their polygraphs—machines used to create copies of letters as they’re written.
Hawkins’ Polygraph
Engraved for the Encyclopædia Londinensis, 1825, U.S. Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2013651023/.
Adjusting the Polygraphs
Washington Nov. 22. 06.
Dear Sir
I formerly troubled you with the small polygraph you made for me in order to get it’s parallels rectified, because from some cause which I cannot discover the half dozen lines at the top of the copy are an illegible scribble, while in every other part of the page it performs perfectly well. it still has that defect as you will percieve by writing half a dozen lines at the top of the paper in a small light character. it’s size is so exactly what I prefer, that if I could get this defect removed, I should value it more than any one I have ever tried . . . .
Th: Jefferson[1]Thomas Jefferson to Charles Willson Peale, Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-4573 accessed 21 Dec 2025.
Notes
| ↑1 | Thomas Jefferson to Charles Willson Peale, Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-4573 accessed 21 Dec 2025. |
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The Lewis and Clark Trail Experience—our sister site at lewisandclark.travel—connects the world to people and places on the Lewis and Clark Trail.
Discover More
- The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Day by Day by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). The story in prose, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
- The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery (abridged) by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2003). Selected journal excerpts, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
- The Lewis and Clark Journals. by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001). The complete story in 13 volumes.
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