Jacob Shallus, assistant clerk for the Pennsylvania General Assembly, engrossed—wrote in script by hand—the original copy of the United States Constitution. He did so in about thirty-five hours, from the evening of Saturday, September 15, until early morning Monday, September 17, 1787, the day on which the Constitution was taken up by the Constitutional Convention, which was meeting in the old Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia. (The building was later renamed Independence Hall because the Declaration of Independence had been adopted there in 1776.) Shallus was a son of German immigrants.
For his weekend labor, Shallus was paid $30, roughly $760 (about $22/hour) in today's money.
Image: Photo by Jeff Reed, the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom in the National Archives building; guards flank the Constitution engrossed by Shallus.
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