HSPT Practice Test 6

¹Benjamin Banneker was born in 1731 on a farm in Baltimore County, Maryland. His mother was free, and his father was a former slave who had gained his freedom, so Benjamin was born free at a time when most Black people in Maryland were enslaved. He attended a small country school for only a short time, but he kept learning long after his schooling ended, borrowing books whenever he could.

²As a young man, Banneker examined a borrowed pocket watch, studying how its gears moved one another. Using a knife, he then carved the parts for a large clock out of wood, working out the sizes of the gears himself. The ingenious clock struck the hours and kept running for the rest of his life. People traveled to the farm just to see it.

³Years later, the Ellicott family built mills near Banneker's farm. George Ellicott, who shared Banneker's interest in science, lent him books on astronomy. Banneker, by then in his late fifties, taught himself to calculate the positions of the sun, moon, and stars and to predict eclipses.

⁴In 1791, another member of the family, the surveyor Andrew Ellicott, was hired to survey the boundaries of the land that would become the nation's capital, and he brought Banneker along as an assistant. For about two months, Banneker made observations of the stars, looked after the expedition's instruments, and kept records that helped the surveyors fix the boundary lines.

⁵That same year, Banneker completed the calculations for an almanac, a yearly book of astronomical tables, tide times, and weather predictions that farmers relied on. He sent a copy of his manuscript to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, along with a letter arguing that Black Americans had the same abilities as anyone else and deserved the same freedoms. Jefferson replied politely and sent the almanac on to a scientist in France. Banneker's almanacs were published for each year from 1792 to 1797, and they made his name known on both sides of the Atlantic.