The first men to spend their time in trying to apply steam power
to the propulsion of a boat were contemporaries of Benjamin
Franklin. Those who worked without Watt's engine could hardly
succeed. One of the earliest of these was William Henry of
Pennsylvania. Henry, in 1763, had the idea of applying power to
paddle wheels, and constructed a boat, but his boat sank, and no
result followed, unless it may be that John Fitch and Robert
Fulton, both of whom were visitors at Henry's house, received
some suggestions from him. James Rumsey of Maryland began
experiments as early as 1774 and by 1786 had a boat that made
four miles an hour against the current of the Potomac.
The most interesting of these early and unsuccessful inventors is
John Fitch, who, was a Connecticut clockmaker living in
Philadelphia. He was eccentric and irregular in his habits and
quite ignorant of the steam engine. But he conceived the idea of
a steamboat and set to work to make one. The record of Fitch's
life is something of a tragedy. At the best he was an unhappy man
and was always close to poverty. As a young man he had left his
family because of unhappy domestic relations with his wife. One
may find in the record of his undertakings which he left in the
Philadelphia Library, to be opened thirty years after its
receipt, these words: "I know of nothing so perplexing and
vexatious to a man of feelings as a turbulent Wife and Steamboat
building.
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