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| 1765 births | |
| 1815 deaths | |
| american engineers | |
| american inventors | |
| national inventors hall of fame | |
| submarine pioneers | |
| people from lancaster, pennsylvania | |
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Robert Fulton ( November 14 , 1765 – February 24 , 1815 ) was a U.S. Engineer and Inventor , who was widely and erroneously credited with developing the first steam-powered ship. LIFE AND CAREER Robert was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania . He may have become interested in Steamboat s in 1777 when (at the age of 12) he visited William Henry of Lancaster, Pennsylvania , who had found out about Watt's Steam Engine on a visit to England ; on return, Henry made his own engine and in 1763 — two years before Fulton was born — and tried putting it in a boat, which sank. When he came of age Fulton went to England in 1786 to study painting. As early as 1793 he proposed plans for steam vessels to both the United States and the British Governments, and in England he met the Duke of Bridgewater, whose canal would shortly be used for trials of a steam tug, and who later ordered steam tugs from William Symington . Symington had successfully tried Steamboat s in 1788 , and it seems probable that Fulton would have been well aware of these developments. In 1797 Fulton went to France (where the Marquis Claude De Jouffroy had made a working Paddle Steamer in 1783 ) and commenced experimenting with submarine torpedoes and torpedo boats. He designed the first practical submarine, '' Nautilus '', commissioned by Napoleon . ''Nautilus'' was first tested in 1800 . In that year he met Robert Livingston , United States Ambassador (whose daughter he married), and they decided to build a steamboat to try out on the Seine. Fulton experimented with the water resistance of hull shapes, made drawings and models and had a Steamboat constructed. At the first trial it sank, but the hull was rebuilt and strengthened, and on August 9 , 1803 , this boat steamed up the River Seine , watched by a large crowd. The boat was 66 feet (20 m) long, 8 feet (2.4 m) beam and made between 3 and 4 miles an hour (5 and 6 km/h) against the current. LATER LIFE The New York legislature granted Fulton the privilege to be the sole provider of all steamboat traffic for thirty years. Competition was forbidden by law. Thomas Gibbons, a steamboat entrepreneur, hired Cornelius Vanderbilt to ferry passengers for a cheaper fare in defiance of the law in an attempt to compete with Fulton for about six months. In 1824, in ''Gibbons v. Ogden'', the Supreme Court struck down Fulton's Government-granted Monopoly ruling that states cannot legally regulate interstate commerce. Steamboat fares almost immediately dropped from seven to three dollars after the decision and traffic increased dramatically. Fulton was unable to successfully compete with the low fares offered by Gibbons and Vanderbilt, which resulted in his bankruptcy. Fulton is accused by in '' The Myth Of The Robber Barons '' of being what he calls a " Political Entrepreneur " --a businessperson who seeks to gain profit through subsidies, protectionism, government contracts, or other such favorable arrangements with government(s) through political influence rather than competing fairly in the marketplace. EXTERNAL LINKS
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