WHO INVENTED THE STEAMBOAT?

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 66, 14 October 1916, Page 4

WHO INVENTED THE STEAMBOAT?

Which country has the most right to claim credit for the invention of the steamboat? Tin's interesting question was raised at the meeting of businessmen on Monday evening, when the speaker (Mr Andrew Deer) referred to< the steamboat as one of the inventions for which we were indebted to America, says the Otago Daily Times. The Dunedin journal goes on to say: The statement was greeted with something like a storm of (lis-; sent, and there were evidently many, present who were prepared, without hesitation, to give the credit to Scotland. As a matter of fact, the invention of the steamboat was of such a progressive and complicated nature that authorities cannot give the credit of it to one country to the exclusion of others. Thurston, in his "History of the Growth of the Steam Engine," states that the earli-| est attempt to propel, a vessel bysteam is claimed by Spanish authorities to have been nuvlc by Blasco de Garay, in the Harbour of Barcelona, Spain, in 1543. This claim is doubtful; but in 1707 Dr. Dionysius Papin, a Huguenot, applied his steam engine to driving a model boat on, the Fulda at Cassel. English, French,! and Swiss experiments followed, with varying success, and in 1763 "William Henry, of Pennsylvania, inspired by | the discoveries of James Watt, completed the first American model ( steamboat. The problem began to be taken up by a number of inventors, and in 1790 one of John Fitch's boats attained a speed of seven miles an hour on the Delaware River. It was placed" as a passenger boat on a line from Philadelphia to Burlington, j Bristol, Bordintown, and Trenton, and "ran between 2000 and 3000 miles without serious accident. In Great! Britain Lord Dundas and Wiliianv Symington were the first to make thej introduction of the steam engine for, the propulsion of ships so completely, successful that no interruption subse-1 quently took place in the growth of, tho new system of water transporta-i tion. The first practical steamboat (says the Eneyclopoedia Britannica) ; was the tug Charlotte Dundas, by William Symington, and tried UV v the Forth and Clyde Canal in 1802.' The earliest inventor to follow up Symington's success was the Amen-; can, Robert Fulton, who, after successful experiments on the Seine,, fitted a steamer on the Hudson in 1807 with engines made t. his de-J signs by Boulton and Watt, ancg brought steam navigation for the first time to a commercial success, j Thurston agrees that Fulton 'is en-, titled to the great honour of having been the first to make steam navigation an everyday commercial success.!