ROBERT FULTON. Tms distinguished mechanician and then penetrate the crust of the world original inventor was a genuine pro- in our western wilderness. duct of the American soil. The genius, indeed, of the men whom America produced in various departments of science in the last century, the Franklins, the Rittenhouses, the Kinnersleys, the Whitneys, should be more highly estimated than the parallel attainments of our own day. At present thousands of instructors and thousands of new influences are paving the way to fresh inventions. Common schools and academies furnish the pupil with profound elementary knowledge; libraries disclose the myriad achievements of the past; special newspapers and magazines carry knowledge to every hamlet; kindred sciences welcome and assist one another; social or ganizations encourage new discovery; government offers its prizes; accumulated commercial and manufacturing wealth rewards the inventor on the instant. How different this splendid triumphal procession from the first elements of science to fame and fortune, from the groping into light of the heaven-sown genius in the infant society of America a hundred years ago! It must needs have been a plant of no common hardihood, fully predestined to growth and vitality which could It has been remarked as a notewor thy coincidence, that Benjamin West and Robert Fulton came into the world in the same vicinity, in what was, at the time of their birth, a wild and uncultivated portion of the country, more remote from the seaboard in means of access and culture, than Arkansas is at present. It is owing to one of these men that the distance has been diminished and that we are enabled to make this truthful comparison. West was born at Springfield, Pa., in 1738. Robert Fulton first saw the light in a township of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, then called Little Britain, but now bearing the name of Fulton, in the year 1765. His father, of the same name, was an emigrant from Ireland. He was at one time, we are told, a tailor; but at his son's birth was the occupant of a farm. He died too early to influence the child's education, which was picked up mainly by himself, though we hear of his being at school, and, as is not uncommon with boys of genius, of being accounted a dull fellow. This, in such cases, means simply that nature is working in a way of her own, independent of the schoolmaster. Of the anecdotes related of his intercourse with his Quaker schoolmaster, Caleb John- money paid by Robert Fulton, minia 1 ture painter, of the city of Philadelphia and State aforesaid;"-lawful money, truly, and very creditable not only to the youth's industry and family piety, but to the appreciation of the good people of Philadelphia. It is pleasant to know, from the enthusiastic narrative of Mr. Reigart, that for fourteen years, the remainder of her life, "this earthly heritage gave peace and comfort to the widow's heart," and was afterwards enjoyed by her daughter. son, there is one of peculiar significance. "I have," said that zealous instructor, in answer to the inquiries of the boy's mother, "used my best endeavors to fasten his attention upon these studies, but Robert pertinaciously declares his head to be so full of original notions that there is no vacant chamber to store away the contents of any dusty books." The busy brain of the boy in fact teemed with notions. At four teen he is at home in all the workshops of the place. He contrives for his companions a paddle-wheel worked by a crank, for their flat-bottomed fishingboat, to relieve the cumbrous poling on the Conestoga. He has got the nickname of "6 Quicksilver Bob" among the workmen at the smithery where the government arms were made in those days of the Revolution, in consequence of his ready calculations of balls and distances, and his consumption of that article in his private experiments. He has also a talent for drawing, displayed in caricaturing the Whig and Tory boys in their fights in the streets of Lancaster. At the age of seventeen, following the track of West, he finds his way to Philadelphia, with the intention of supporting himself as a painter, and is so successful in the pursuit that at the age of twenty-one he is enabled to establish his mother on a farm of eighty-four acres, in the distant Washington County of the State, the consideration for which expressed in the deed is eighty pounds "lawful this princely abode under the protection of the steward, a man of conse 'Reigart's recent Life of Fulton, Philadelphia, 1856-a Some symptoms of disease, of a distressing pulmonary character, coming upon him at this time, and his artistical reputation being somewhat established, he was induced by his friends to visit England, with the expectation of improved health, and aid and counsel in his profession from Benjamin West, who had become established in the favor of the court and patrons of art of that country. The kind Quaker painter received him with friendly hospitality, making him a sharer of his home and artistic resources for several years. At the end of this genial apprenticeship, or, as we should rather say, fellowship, Fulton pursued his course about England, with the design of studying the masterpieces of art congregated in the rural mansions of the nobility. He was for a time at Powderham Castle, the seat of the Courtenays in Devonshire, engaged in copying the works of the masters on its walls. He seems to have resided in book which contains numerous anecdotes of these early quence on such estates. It was while he was in the neighborhood of Exeter years. that he made the acquaintance of the was forwarded with a letter to GoverEarl of Bridgewater, the famous parent nor Mifflin of Pennsylvania, urging, of the canal system in England. By with numerous calculations, the introhis advice and example and the kin- duction of a canal system into that dred encouragement of Lord Stanhope, State, " as a great national question." with whom he was intimate, it would appear that Fulton was led to adopt the profession of a civil engineer, in which, and not as a painter, he was destined to become so well known to the world. At this time, in 1793, he addressed Fulton also patented in England a mill for sawing marble, for which he . received the thanks of the British Society for the Promotion of Arts and Commerce, and an honorary medal; also machines for spinning flax, making ropes, and an earth-excavator for dig. a letter to Lord Stanhope on the sub-ging canals. ject of some experiments in the appli- In 1797 he passed over to Paris, with cation of steam to navigation, containing the views which he afterwards put in practice on the Hudson, and which if heeded by the noble earl, "the important invention of a successful steamboat," says Professor Renwick, might have been given to the world ten years earlier than its actual introduction." the design of bringing to the notice of the French Government his invention of the torpedo, a device for the blowing up of enemy's vessels by attaching be neath the water a copper canister of gunpowder, to be discharged by a gunlock and clockwork. He found his ingenious countryman, Joel Barlow, in the French capital, a kindred spirit with whom he formed an acquaintance, which, as in the case of West, was intimately continued for years under the same roof. Fulton availed himself of this opportunity to study the French and German and Italian languages, and improve his acquaintance with the higher branches of mechanical science Among other employments, he projected, it is said, two buildings for the exhibition of panoramas, the success of which owed much to his assistance. On the arrival of Chancellor Livingston in France, in 1801, as minister, he found Fulton now took up his residence at Birmingham, then illuminated by the genius of James Watt, to whom he was naturally attracted and with whose labors on the steam-engine he became acquainted. He employed himself particularly in the study of canals, and took out a patent for a double-inclined plane of his invention for measuring inequalities of height, the principle of which was exhibited in the treatise on the improvement of canal navigation, which he published in London in 1796, with numerous well-executed plates from designs from his own hand. A a ready assistant in Fulton to the copy of this work was sent by the au- schemes of steam navigation in which thor to President Washington, with the he had been already engaged on the intention of bringing its theories into Hudson. Experiments were set on foot practical use in America. Another in the two following years which re sulted in sufficient success in the movement of a boat of considerable size propelled by steam on the Seine, to justify the prosecution of the work in America. An engine of a peculiar construction, planned by Fulton, was ordered in England from Watt and Bolton at Birmingham. The preparation of this machinery was in part superintended by Fulton himself. He had not, it would seem, relinquished his favorite schemes of torpedo warfare, and finding little encouragement or success in his operations at Brest, under the auspices of Napoleon, entered into a negotiation, at the instance of Earl Stanhope, who thought the thing of importance, with the English Government. This how ever also proved fruitless. The steamengine was completed and sent to New York in 1806. In December of the same year Fulton arrived in that city, and immediately directed his attention to his favorite projects. He enlisted the Government in his scheme of "torpedo warfare," which he brought to the attention of the citizens in a lecture before the magistrates and a few invited persons on Governor's Island, and a notable experiment in the harbor in July, 1807, when an old brig was exploded by one of his heavily charged canisters. A pleasant account of the excitement into which the town was thrown by these experiments may be read in one of the numbers of Washington Irving's "Salmagundi," in which Will Wizard undertakes to give an account of the affair. The pretensions of "the North River Society," which it was alleged was intended to set that river on fire, were a frequent subject of merriment with the young wags of this merry periodical, and Fulton's project seemed to bring the thing to a head. "The society have, it seems," says the number for July, 1807, "invented a cunning machine, shrewdly yclept Torpedo; by which the stoutest lineof-battle ship, even a Santissima Trini dad, may be caught napping and decomposed in a twinkling; a kind of submarine powder magazine to swim under water, like an aquatic mole or water rat, and destroy the enemy in the moments of unsuspicious security." We shall presently see Fulton returning to these inventions. In the mean time he was proceeding with the construction of the steamboat, which was to be a greater marvel to the quidnuncs of the town than the torpedo itself. By a privilege already granted by the Legislature of the State, the exclusive right of navigating its waters was reserved to himself and Livingston. To supply funds for the completion of his vessel, he offered one third of this patent right for sale; but no one was found with faith enough in the enterprise to induce him to come. forward as the purchaser. The boat was however at last launched on the East River, and, contrary to the public expectation, was actually moved by her machinery to her station on the Hudson. The Clermont-the boat was thus named from the seat of Chancellor Livingston on the Hudson—was next advertised to sail for Albany; and ac cordingly took her departure on Monday afternoon, September 14, 1807, |