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panied by winks and jests. The newspapers made no mention of the matter. It was a joke, ill-fitted to the serious times and to those matters of consequence that engrossed popular attention.

A few days after this experiment Fitch conceived the idea of propelling the boat by a series of twelve upright

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Plan of M. Fitch's Steam Boat

66.-Fitch's second boat. With his little experimental engine and upright oars it was operated on the Delaware River, at Philadelphia, in 1786. The contemporary engraving here reproduced is that printed in the Columbian Magazine for December, 1786. By an oversight the engraver of 1786 omitted to show the smoke-pipe.

paddles, like oars, arranged six on each side and operated by a system of cranks. The device was accordingly built and fitted to the skiff, and was found to move the craft with increased speed and power. It was nevertheless seen that additional money was needed for larger machinery and a bigger boat, in order to carry on a test under conditions more nearly approaching the practical commercial vehicle toward which the inventor was aiming.

Neither during his earlier efforts nor at any time did Fitch falter in his certainty that he had hit upon a means of transportation which would alter the affairs of mankind, or that he would succeed in producing, in concrete form, the thing his brain had already constructed. It was amid these days that he wrote a letter to Stacy Potts, a member of the company, in which he said: "My expectations are daily increasing as to the success of our undertaking, and dout not but it will be a matter of the first magnitude to the World." Two other letters written by the inventor at the same time show an identical frame of mind. One was a petition to the Pennsylvania Assembly asking for a loan of £150, in which he spoke of steam transportation as "a plan that would enrich America at least 3 times as much as all that country N.W. [northwest] of the Ohio, as it would make that country four times as valuable, beside the inconceivable advantages to the settled portion of the continent." In the same communication he defined a characteristic of the people by saying, "There is such a strange infatuation in mankind that it seems they would rather lay out their money in Beloons and Fireworks, and be a pest to Society than to lay it out in something that would be of use to themselves and Country." The legislature refused to make the requested loan. The other letter was a similar request addressed to General Thomas Mifflin, of Pennsylvania, in which Fitch declared: “I am of opinion, that a vessel may be carried six, seven or eight miles per hour, by the force of steam, and the larger the vessel, the better it will answer, and am strongly inclined

1 This letter, quoted by Westcott in his biography of Fitch, has long been lost. It was recently rediscovered by Emil Sauer, the antiquary, and presented to the New York Historical Society by S. V. Hoffman, Esq., the President of that Institution, together with five other important Fitch documents found with it.

It was the custom at that time for state legislatures to advance money to inventors for the prosecution of enterprises useful to society. The Pennsylvania Assembly, a few weeks before, had loaned another man £300 for the manufacture of bar iron.

Balloons had lately been invented, and had been shown in America for the first time.

to believe that it will answer for sea Voiages as well as for inland Navigation. Was it a thing of trifling consequence to my Country, I would not persue it with such assiduity."

All Fitch's efforts to obtain enough money in 1786 to enable him to continue the work were fruitless. In that year he deposited his plans and drawings with the American Philosophical Society, in Philadelphia, but like so much other material evidence of his invention, those things disappeared. When Westcott sought for them1 they were not to be found. The models and drawings of Fitch's early boats were destroyed by the burning of the United States Patent Office in 1836. One contemporary evidence of what was done in 1786 remains. It is the picture of his second boat, engraved on copper and published in the Columbian Magazine for December of that year,2 together with a brief reference to the mechanism then used which was soon afterward printed in the same periodical. The illustration in this work is photographed from the original printed in 1786. A part of the contemporary description of the mechanism of the second boat said:

"The piston is to move about three feet, and each vibration of the piston turns the axle tree about two-thirds round. They propose to make the piston to strike thirty strokes in a minute; which will give the axle-tree about forty revolutions. Each revolution of the axle-tree moves twelve oars five and a half feet. As six oars come out of the water six more enter the water; which makes a stroke of about eleven feet each revolution. The oars work perpendicularly, and make a stroke similar to the paddle of a canoe . . . and both the action and reaction of the piston operate to turn the axle-tree the same way.'

1 About 1856.

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2 Through some odd oversight the engraver showed no smoke-stack.

The thing that prevented early engineers up to about 1780 from developing the steam-engine, was the difficulty of converting the back-and-fourth motion of the piston into a rotary motion by means of a wheel moved by the piston. The mechanical principle thus sought had been in use for centuries on domestic spinning wheels, but no one thought of applying it to steam-engines until Pickard, in 1780, devised the crank attachment by which the dead point of the wheel was passed and a complète revolution obtained.

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67.-Early literature relating to travel in America. Title page of Rumsey's pamphlet claiming precedence over Fitch as a steamboat inventor. Second edition of the first American book on steamboats. Printed in 1788.

Fitch was reduced to temporary inactivity through lack of money. Some members of his company had originally subscribed because of friendship for the inventor with no hope of return, while others, over-enthusiastic, had expected large and immediate results from their investments. Both sorts were disinclined to make further contributions, and in extremity Fitch turned again to the various legislatures in an effort to secure recognition of his rights as an inventor, and privileges in the use of the steamboat. His applications to some of those bodies were fought by various other men who had suggested improvements in the use of steam as applied to existing contrivances, but Fitch met such opposition boldly. In his statement to the Pennsylvania Assembly he said, among other things:

"I never pretended to be the first inventor of the steam engine, nor ever did Petition for an Exclusive right for them. I have never asked it in any other way than where it has never been applied, and I presume the World cannot produce a steam engine floating on the water. Neither do I conceive that all the Improvements that are yet to be made on steam are to be done on the water

"I here produce seven different plans of applying the force of steam to a boat, and could produce four different models, if necessary "It is the force and power that I contend for. applying that force to vessels I claim priority, application..

As to the thought of and not the mode of

"It is an undoubted fact that I am the first inventor of the steamboat1; . I have set myself up as a mark of derision, and have suffered every insult that the contempt which the populace have for projectors could inflict. .

"The propelling of a boat with steam is as new as the rowing of a boat with angels, and I claim the first thought and invention of it."

Opposition collapsed before words like that, and the lawmakers recognized the inventor's claim. The state of Delaware, on February 3, 1787, gave to Fitch the exclu

1 He was the first in America, but not in the world. His work and devices show that he did not know of earlier similar inventions mentioned in a later chapter.

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