ROBERT FULTON stands before the world the accredited author of the steamboat, and although his priority of invention has been successfully disputed, there can be no doubt that he was the first to impress upon the popular mind the practicability, convenience and necessity of the use of steam for journeys by inland waters. Robert Fulton was born at Little Britain, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1765. His parents were immigrants from Kilkenny, Ireland. He received a plain education at the village school, and early displayed a fondness for mechanical pursuits and showed a great taste for drawing. When his mother complained to his teacher that the boy, then twelve years old, was making slow progress, the schoolmaster replied that he had done his best for the lad, and that Robert had told him that "his head was so full of new ideas that there was no room for the storage of the contents of dusty books." Ere long the boy furnished a gunmaker with excellent drawings of the stock, lock and barrel. At the age of fourteen he invented an air-gun. The events of the Revolutionary War naturally turned the mind of this young genius to the invention of implements of destruction. He was heart and soul with the Colonists in their struggle for liberty, and remained a true American to the day of his death.

In his eighteenth year Fulton removed to Philadelphia, and began to paint portraits and landscapes; he also proved himself a first-class mechanical draughtsman. So successful

was he that at the age of twenty-four he had saved sufficient money to purchase a small farm in Washington County, Pa. This property he deeded to his mother. Whilst in Philadelphia Fulton made the acquaintance of many influential men, amongst them being Benjamin Franklin. These friends proved to him in after life of great service.

In November, 1786, Robert Fulton sailed for England, and on his arrival in London was received as an inmate in the house of Benjamin West, a native of Pennsylvania, who had already become famous as an historical painter in England. Fulton continued to reside with him for some years and received instruction from him in his profession. After leaving West, painting was for some time his chief employment. The fine arts were destined, however, with Fulton to give place to the mechanical. In 1794 he was engaged by the Duke of Bridgewater in canal projects. He adopted and patented the system of inclined planes as a substitute for locks. He also wrote a treatise on canals, and now for the first time styled himself a civil engineer. About this time he invented a mill for sawing marble, and patented methods of spinning flax and making ropes. At the end of 1796 he went to Paris, on the invitation of Joel Barlow, the United States Minister to the French Government. Fulton resided with him for seven years.

While at Paris two projects appear to have occupied a large portion of Fulton's time and attention: one, a submarine torpedo, or as he called it a carcass; this was a box filled with combustibles, which was to be propelled under water and made to explode beneath the bottom of a vessel; the other, a submarine boat, intended to be used for a similar destructive purpose. The first was a failure; but of his submarine boat he made many trials and exhibitions, some of them at the expense of the French Government, with occasional failures and partial success, on the Seine, at Havre and at Rouen. But for all practical purposes this was as much a failure as the other. He appears, however, to have clung to it with great perseverance, and not long before his death exhibited its power by blowing up an old vessel in the neighborhood of New York.

At Paris Fulton studied the higher branches of science, and also made himself master of the modern languages. He projected the first panorama exhibited at Paris, and in conjunction with Robert Livingston, the American author and statesman, then United States Minister to France, began to make experiments on the Seine with small steamboats. The success was indifferent. Soon after this time he was invited to England by the ministry of that country, at the suggestion of Earl Stanhope, with whom Fulton had become acquainted about the time of his introduction to the Duke of Bridgewater. The object of the English ministry appears to have been to employ him in the construction of his submarine implements of war. On the 15th of October, 1805, off Walmar Castle, the home of William Pitt, Fulton gave an exhibition of his submarine apparatus. Seventy pounds of powder were used. The vessel to be blown up was a brig. "Exactly in fifteen minutes from the time of drawing the peg and throwing the carcass into the water, the explosion took place. It lifted the brig almost bodily and broke her completely in two. The ends sank immediately, and nothing was seen but floating fragments." The vessel "went to pieces like a shattered eggshell." Fulton's negotiations with the British Government, however, fell through.

In 1806 Fulton arrived at New York, and soon after, with funds supplied by Livingston, commenced the construction of a steam-vessel of considerable size, which began to navigate the Hudson in 1807. He named his first boat the "Clermont," and in August of that year made his trial trip between New York and Albany and back. The whole distance of one hundred and fifty miles was covered at a rate equal to five miles an hour. No voyage is more memorable in the history of New York since that of Hudson, who first ascended this river in 1609.

Fulton's practical success afterwards enabled him to build other vessels of large dimensions: one of them, a frigate, the "Fulton the First," had a double hull, 156 feet long, 56 feet wide and 20 feet deep, measuring 2,475 tons. She made her trial trip to Sandy Hook and back, fifty-three miles, in eight hours and twenty minutes. The inventor's reputation was