The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century. by Edward W. Byrn
107. The same year Oliver Evans used a stern paddle wheel boat on the
246 words | Chapter 52
Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It was driven by a double acting high
pressure engine, and geared so as to rotate wagon wheels by which it was
transported on land, as well as the paddle wheels when on the water. It
was in primitive form both a locomotive and a steamboat.
[Illustration: FIG. 108.--THE “CLERMONT,” 1807.]
In 1807 Robert Fulton built the “Clermont,” and permanently established
steam navigation on the Hudson River between New York and Albany. Fulton
in 1802-1803, while living in Paris with Mr. Joel Barlow, and with the
aid and encouragement of Chancellor Livingston, of New Jersey, had built
an earlier steamboat 86 feet long, and although it broke down owing to
defects in the strength of the hull, he was so encouraged that he
ordered Messrs. Boulton & Watt, of England, to send to America a new
steam engine, and upon his return to America he built the “Clermont.”
This vessel, although not the first steamboat, was nevertheless the
first to make a voyage of any considerable length, and to run regularly
and continuously for practical purposes, and Fulton was the first
inventor in this field whose labors were not to be classed as an
abandoned experiment. The “Clermont” as originally built was quite a
different looking boat from that usually given in the histories. A model
of the original construction is to be found in the National Museum at
Washington. In the winter of 1807-8 she was remodeled as shown in Fig.
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