Robert Fulton

Robert Fulton (1765-1815), American inventor, civil engineer, and artist, established the first regular and commercially successful steamboat operation.

Robert Fulton was born November 14, 1765, in Lancaster County, Pa. His father worked at farming, among other jobs, and died when Robert was a small boy. By the age of 10 Robert showed promise as an artist and was employed by local gunsmiths to make designs for their work. At 17 he went to Philadelphia, the cultural center of the Atlantic seaboard, and spent 4 years making portraits and doing miniatures. Financially successful, he was able to buy a farm near the city for his mother.

In 1786 Fulton went to London to study painting with Benjamin West, who had been a family friend and was by this time one of the leading American painters living in England. England was already in the midst of its industrial revolution, and Fulton was fascinated by the new engineering enterprises—canals, mines, bridges, roads, and factories. His interest became professional, and after about 1793 he gave up painting as a vocation, pursuing it only for his own amusement.

As early as 1794 Fulton considered using steam power to drive a boat. Seven years earlier John Fitch had successfully demonstrated his steamboat on the Delaware River at Philadelphia, but in the interim no one had been able to make both a mechanical and commercial success of the idea. Though the British government had banned the export of steam engines, Fulton wrote to the firm of Boulton and Watt about the possibility of buying a ready-made engine to be applied to boat propulsion.

Most of Fulton's energy during these years was devoted to more conventional problems of civil and mechanical engineering. He patented in England a "double-incline plane" for hauling canal boats over difficult terrain and machines to saw marble, to spin flax, and to twist hemp for rope. He built a mechanical dredge to speed the construction of canals and in 1796 published his illustrated pamphlet, A Treatise on the Improvement of Canal Navigation.

For the next 10 years Fulton devoted himself to the development of underwater warfare through the invention and improvement of a submarine and explosive torpedoes. It is thought that he believed that if warfare were made sufficiently destructive and horrible it would be abandoned—a fallacy often invoked by inventors of military devices. He tried to interest the French government in his experiments, and he obtained the promise of prizes for any British ships he might destroy with his devices. In 1801 he proceeded with his submarine, the Nautilus, against various ships but was unsuccessful. By 1804 his failure to win French money for destroying British ships led him to offer to destroy French ships for the British government. Once again he failed in combat, although he was able to blow up one ship during an experiment.

In 1802 Fulton had met Robert R. Livingston, formerly a partner in another steamboat venture but recently appointed U.S. minister to the French government. Despite the failure of Fulton's earlier ventures, Livingston agreed to support Fulton's old idea of building a steamboat. In 1803 an engine was ordered (disassembled and with many duplicate parts) from Boulton and Watt, to be delivered in New York City. But it was 1806 before permission to export the engine was obtained, the parts were assembled, and Fulton was able to sail for America.

The engine was put together in New York and set aboard a locally built vessel. One of the problems was to determine the proper proportions for a steamboat. Fulton was convinced that science dictated a very long and narrow hull, though experience later proved him wrong. Although Livingston had been an advocate of a kind of jet propulsion for steamboats (that is, a jet of water forced out the back of the boat under high pressure), the two now settled on paddle wheels as the best method. On Aug. 17, 1807, the Clermont (as it was later named) began its first successful voyage up the Hudson River to Albany, N.Y. Under way it averaged 5 miles per hour.

After the voyage of the Clermont, steamboats appeared up and down the Atlantic Coast, and Fulton himself introduced the first steamboat on the western waters. Before his death on February 24, 1815 he had erected a large boat works in New Jersey and directed the building of one ferryboat, a torpedo boat, and 17 regular steamboats.

Fulton's success, where at least a dozen other American inventors had failed, had many causes. In Livingston he had a rich and politically powerful patron who was able to obtain a lucrative monopoly on the steam navigation of the state's waters. Fulton also began his work with a first-class engine, purchased from Boulton and Watt, the world's leading engine builders. Previous inventors, including John Fitch, had had to build their own engines. Also, Fulton was able to employ mechanics and experimenters who had, over the past 2 decades, gained considerable experience with steam engines. It was Fulton's luck and genius to be able to combine these elements into a commercially successful steamboat venture.

Further Reading

The first, and still useful, biography of Fulton is Cadwallader D. Colden, The Life of Robert Fulton (1817). The best biography is H. W. Dickinson, Robert Fulton, Engineer and Artist: His Life and Works (1913). Also useful is George Dangerfield, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston of New York, 1746-1813 (1960). For the prehistory of steamboats see James Thomas Flexner, Steamboats Come True: American Inventors in Action (1944). □

Fulton, Robert (1765–1815), American engineer. He was first apprenticed to a jeweller, then took up portrait and landscape painting as a profession, and finally, during a visit to England in 1794, decided that engineering was to be his career. His initial energies were devoted to canal engineering and he took out a British patent for superseding canal locks by inclined planes, an invention which failed to attract much attention. In 1797 he settled in Paris and in 1801, after a great many setbacks, managed to persuade Napoleon that the French answer to British sea power lay in the use of submarines. He received a grant of 10,000 francs with which to construct a prototype and built the Nautilus. Ellipsoid in shape, with a length of 6.4 metres (21 ft) and a diameter of 2.1 metres (7 ft), she could submerge by flooding internal ballast tanks. She was driven under water by a propeller turned by hand and on the surface by a collapsible mast and sail. At a demonstration at Brest, Fulton succeeded in blowing up an old schooner, moored in the centre of the harbour as a target, by diving the submarine beneath the vessel and attaching to her bottom an explosive charge carried externally on the submarine. Despite this success, the French Ministry of Marine was unimpressed, as were the British Admiralty and the American authorities when he later demonstrated the submarine to them.

He was much more successful with his ventures into steam propulsion and in 1803, with the help of the American politician Robert Livingston (1746–1813), who was in Paris to negotiate the Louisiana Purchase, demonstrated a 20-metre (65-ft) paddle steamer, fitted with an 8-horsepower engine of French design, on the River Seine. Then in 1807, he designed a paddle steamer which he and Livingston, who had been granted the monopoly of steam navigation on all waters within the New York State boundaries, built. Later called the Clermont, she was commercially successful and in the following years Fulton designed several more. He also built the turtle-boat; sat on the commission which recommended the construction of the Erie Canal; and in October 1814 launched a 50-metre (167-ft), 6-knot, steam catamaran, the world's first powered warship. Built for the US Navy Department she had her boiler in one hull and her engine in the other, and was armed with 26 32-pounder guns and fitted with a central paddle wheel. Fulton called her the Demologos (‘the word of the people’) but she was later renamed the Fulton in his honour. She was really a floating gun platform suited only for calm water. Designed to defend New York, the Anglo-American War (1812–14) ended before she saw any action.

Fulton spent much of his fortune on his submarine designs, and in litigation against those who pirated his steamboat patents and others who attempted to break the monopolies he and Livingston held. But he integrated the key inventions of other early ship designers, including David Bushnell, and made them into successful prototype vessels.

Fulton, Robert (1765–1815), inventor.Best known for his development of the first commercially successful steamboat in 1807, Fulton also made important contributions in portrait painting, canal engineering, and naval warfare. Born in Pennsylvania, he lived most of his adult life in Europe. His first naval project was the submarine Nautilus, manually driven underwater and tested successfully in French waters in 1800. Shifting to mine warfare, Fulton successfully blew up two brigs with floating mines in tests off Dover, England, in 1805 and New York in 1807. His grand vision was to promote freedom of the seas and free trade, using naval weapons to prevent war. He offered these weapons alternately to Napoleon and the British with little success. Returning to America, Fulton continued developing steamboats and naval weapons until his death. His American‐developed weapons concepts stressed harbor defense, and included the moored mine, the sub marine gun, use of the steamboat for troop transport in the War of 1812, and the construction of the first steam warship in history, USS Fulton the First. His Nautilus was the first cigar‐shaped submarine, and he was the first to conceive of the moored mine. Fulton's emphasis on the submarine, on mines, and on the deterrent effect have particular relevance for the modern era.

Bibliography

Alex Roland , Underwater Warfare in the Age of Sail, 1978.
Wallace S. Hutcheon, Jr. , Robert Fulton: Pioneer of Undersea Warfare, 1981.
Cynthia Owen Philip , Robert Fulton: A Biography, 1985.

Wallace S. Hutcheon, Jr.

Robert Fulton 1765–1815, American inventor, engineer, and painter, b. near Lancaster, Pa. He was a man remarkable for his many talents and his mechanical genius. An expert gunsmith at the time of the American Revolution, he later turned to painting (1782–86) landscapes and portraits in Philadelphia. In England and France his painting gained some notice, but he became interested in canal engineering and the invention of machinery. He worked at making underwater torpedoes and submarines as well as other mechanical devices. In 1802 he contracted to build a steamboat for Robert R. Livingston, who held a monopoly on steamboat navigation on the Hudson. In 1807 the Clermont, equipped with an English engine, was launched. A number of men had built steamboats before Fulton (see steamship ), including John Fitch and William Symington. Fulton's steamship, however, was the first to be commercially successful in American waters, and Fulton was therefore popularly considered the inventor of the steamboat. He also designed other vessels, among them a steam warship.

Bibliography: See biographies by B. Richnak (1984) and C. O. Philip (1985).

Fulton, Robert (1765–1815) engineer and entrepreneur, born in Little Britain Township (later Fulton), Pennsylvania. Fulton's improvements over earlier designs led to the successful commercial development of the steamboat (1807), resulting in his being popularly perceived as the vehicle's inventor. In 1813–15 Fulton adapted the steam ferry, a catamaran, into the first steam warship or “steam battery,” but the War of 1812 concluded before it was put into service.

Fulton spent much of his early career in England and France working on underwater naval weapons, but conceptually he was too far ahead of the technology of his time.

Fulton, Robert (1765–1815) US inventor and engineer. Designing torpedoes and other naval weapons, his main interest was in navigation and, as early as 1796, he was urging the USA to build canals. In 1807, he pioneered the use of steamboats for carrying passengers and freight, when his craft, Clermont, travelled between New York City and Albany.

Fulton, Robert. See Steam Power.