3 Scenes from the Life of Benjamin Banneker

On this month’s Relatively Prime Samuel shares three scenes from the life of Benjamin Banneker. One about a clock, one about a solar eclipse projectsion, and one about a puzzle. You can learn more about the life of Benjamin Banneker by checking out the book The Life of Benjamin Banneker by Silvio Bendini which was essential in the production of this episode and it is available to borrow for free on the Internet Archive or if you prefer a physical copy your library may have it on hand and if they do not the amazing system that is Interlibrary Loan should be able to provide for you.

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Music:
Chris Zabriske
Rodrigonzález
Griffin Lundin
ᕲi̾r̾੮ Porcelai̾n

Transcript:

3 Scenes from the life of Benjamin Banneker

Scene 1: The Clock

It was only the second timepiece he had ever seen. And, to those of us alive today, the first we would have thought of as such, as this was a pocket watch and the other a simple sundial.

That Benjamin Banneker had never seen a watch before is not that surprising. After all he was a teenaged free African American man in the colony of Maryland in either the late 1740s or early 1750s. While there were a number of clockmakers who provided their works to farmers in the Chesapeake region, it will likely not come as a surprise that a family where the father is a freed slave and the mother the daughter of a freed slave and a formerly indentured servant were not among those clockmakers clients, though the family’s tobacco farm did allow them to be self-sufficient. The most likely thing is that Benjamin found a merchant or a traveler who not only owned a pocket watch but was willing to let a precocious free young black man take a good long look at it.

There is no historical evidence of what exactly Benjamin did when he set his eyes upon the second timepiece he had ever seen but we can make some educated guesses.

We can guess that he was able to get a good look at workings within. We can guess that he felt fascinated by these workings. We can guess his mind raced trying to understand how such workings were able to keep time so well that they could be relied upon. We can guess he wanted a clock of his own.

We can make those guesses because of what we know.

We know that after seeing the pocket watch Benjamin began to draw out the internal workings of gears and wheels and springs. We know he then worked on calculating the sizes and ratios needed to make a clock function correctly. And we know he used those drawings and calculations to make a clock all his own.

Fashioned primarily out of wood he carved himself, up to and including the gears, the clock Benjamin Banneker designed and built at 21 worked until he died at 74.

Scene 2: The Projection

More than 30 years of working the farm later Benjamin Banneker learns about, and quickly falls in love with, astronomy. At first it is only through occasional discussions with neighbor and noted amateur astronomer George Ellicott, likely with some nighttime telescopic adventures.

Never one to do things in half measure though, Benjamin wanted more. Which he got in 1788, when George offered to lend to him a telescope, some drafting instruments, and many astronomical texts. George also offered Benjamin lesson to help him through the texts and to learn to use the instruments. These lessons turned out to be unnecessary as Benjamin