Benjamin Banneker
Self-taught astronomer and almanac author
At a glance
- Inventor
- Benjamin Banneker
- Life
- 1731–1806
- Birthplace
- Baltimore County, Maryland
- Country
- United States
- Region
- United States
- Era
- Early Modern
- Fields
- Science & Engineering, Agriculture
- Evidence
- Documented
- Records
- 0 in this archive
What they did
A free Black farmer in Maryland, Banneker calculated ephemerides and published almanacs from 1792, and assisted Andrew Ellicott in the boundary survey of the federal district.
Historical context
Almanac astronomy required painstaking manual computation; Banneker learned it largely from borrowed instruments and books.
The legacy
His 1791 letter to Thomas Jefferson, enclosing his almanac calculations and challenging Jefferson's claims about Black intellect, survives in the record. Note: the story that he reconstructed the Washington city plan from memory is a later embellishment.
The evidence
Banneker–Jefferson correspondence, 1791
Primary recordBanneker almanacs, 1792–1797
Institutional record
Documentation strength
- 2
- Sources
- 1
- Primary
- 2
- Publishers
Calculated from the sources actually attached to this record — the closer a source sits to the original document, the more it counts. It is never asserted by hand.