2. Robert Fulton and the steamboat
Robert Fulton is widely acclaimed as the inventor of the steamboat. Some argue that it was John Fitch, who demonstrated a steam-powered boat in which steam propelled oars on the Delaware River in 1787. Among the spectators were delegating to the American Constitutional Convention. But both Fitch and Fulton were late to the science of using steam engines for navigation. It had been accomplished in France on the Doubs River over a decade earlier than Fitch’s demonstration. The first successful steamboat used oars to propel it across the water, and was the brainchild of Claude de Jouffrey. Four years before Fitch’s demonstration, de Jouffrey successfully operated another steamboat, using paddle wheels, on the Saone.
Fulton spent more than two decades in Europe and was well aware of the work of de Jouffrey. While in France Fulton built the first submarine operated by human muscle, the Nautilus, for the French government under Bonaparte. He also met Robert Livingstone, then American minister to France. In 1807 Fulton and Livingstone started the first scheduled commercial steamboat operation in America, on the Hudson River between New York and Albany, using a vessel of Fulton’s design, the North River Steamboat, later renamed Clermont. Fulton did not invent the steamboat, but his commercialization of it led to his becoming its inventor in the minds of the American public.