Fulton, Robert (1765-1815)

US engineer and inventor who designed the first successful steamships. He produced a submarine, the Nautilus, for Napoleon's government in France 1801, and experimented with steam navigation on the Seine, then returned to the USA. The first steam vessel of note, known as the Clermont, appeared on the river Hudson 1807, sailing between New York and Albany. The first steam warship was the USS Fulton, of 38 tonnes, built 1815. Fulton was born in Pennsylvania and became a portrait painter in Philadelphia. He went to England 1787 to study art but was so taken with the Industrial Revolution that from 1793 he devoted himself to engineering. He designed and patented a device for hauling canal boats over difficult country, and machines for sawing marble and twisting hemp (for rope), and he built a mechanical dredger for canal construction. In 1796, Fulton went to France, where he experimented with fitting steam engines to ships. His steamships were based on prototypes by US inventor John Fitch. The Clermont had paddle wheels and a 18-kW/24-hp engine and travelled at an average speed of 8 kph/5 mph. After this success, a large boatworks was built in New Jersey, and steamboats came into use along the Atlantic Coast and later in the West. and, 1904-05, at the University of Munich under Dr Alzheimer.