Robert Fulton (1765–1815) engineer and inventor

Born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to Irish immigrant parents, Fulton spent his early years designing little paddleboats and sketching. At age 17, he moved to Philadelphia, where he was apprenticed to a jeweler, beginning a long career of design and invention. Then in 1786, he moved to Britain, where he studied with the well-known American artist Benjamin West and became an illustrator and essayist as well.

Fulton also became interested in canals and canal boats in the 1790s and spent a considerable number of years in Britain and France designing marine vessels and torpedoes. Shortly thereafter, he began to expand his interests, learned several languages, and became interested in design. He began to design canal boats first, before turning his attention to submarines. He developed the first submarine capable of diving and surfacing, but propulsion was a problem he could never successfully solve.

After becoming acquainted with Robert LIVINGSTON, then the U.S. minister to France, he turned his attention to steamboats. After meeting with some initial success, he returned to the United States and began building a steamboat in New York that would become known as the Clermont. The boat became the first successful steamboat and in 1807 began a service between New York City and Albany. The trip took 32 hours. Other similar boats followed, and the New York legislature granted him and Livingston a monopoly on steamboat transportation in New York harbor. The monopoly would later be challenged by a rival company operating between New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia and headed by Thomas Gibbons and his captain, Cornelius VANDERBILT. The case was decided in the Supreme Court of the United States in favor of Gibbons. One of Fulton’s last achievements was the design of a steam warship to defend New York harbor against the British in the War of 1812; Congress ordered the boat built in 1814, but Fulton died before its completion.

In addition to his designs, Fulton was also known as an artist, although few of his original works remain. Along with John STEVENS, he is remembered as the father of the steamboat that revolutionized transportation after the War of 1812.

Further reading

• Hill, Ralph Nading. Robert Fulton and the Steamboat. New York: Random House, 1954. 
• Philip, Cynthia Owen. Robert Fulton: A Biography. New York: Franklin Watts, 1985. 
• Sale, Kirkpatrick. Fire of His Genius: Robert Fulton and the American Dream. New York: Free Press, 2001.