have been willing to give up making gins and devote themselves to
selling the rights they had already obtained, but it was difficult to
find purchasers for titles which were so openly disregarded on every
hand. They found it almost impossible to collect payments for the few
machines they did sell, the buyers preferring to be sued, trusting to
a jury of their neighbors deciding for them against the unpopular
manufacturers, who claimed to control such an important machine as the
gin. Whitney tried to sell his patent rights for South Carolina to
that state itself, and had the matter brought before the Legislature.
It met with better success than usual. “I have been at this place,” he
writes in a letter, “a little more than two weeks attending the
Legislature. A few hours previous to their adjournment they voted to
purchase for the state of South Carolina my patent-right to the
machine for cleaning cotton at $50,000, of which sum $20,000 is to be
paid in hand, and the remainder in three annual payments of $10,000
each.” To this he added, “We get but a song for it in comparison with
the worth of the thing, but it is securing something. It will enable
Miller & Whitney to pay their debts and divide something between
them.”
This plan of selling the rights to the states seemed to promise better
things for the inventor. In December, 1802, he arranged for the sale
of similar rights to the state of North Carolina, and a little later a
similar agreement was made with Tennessee. But imagine his dismay when
the South Carolina Legislature suddenly annulled its contract with
him, refused to make any further payments, and began suit to recover
what had already been paid him. The current of popular opinion had
again set against this firm of two. It was said that a man in
Switzerland had invented a cotton-gin before Whitney, and that the
main features of his own machine had been taken from others. But there
were some upright and honorable men in the South Carolina Legislature,
and they finally succeeded in convincing their associates that Whitney
had been maligned. In the session of 1804 the Legislature rescinded
its latest act in regard to the gin, and testified to its high opinion
of Whitney.
The inventor’s faithful partner, Miller, died in 1803. He had stood by
Whitney through thick and thin, and had met one buffet after another.
In spite of his splendid spirit the ceaseless war to protect their
claims had somewhat broken him, and he had despaired of ever receiving
justice in the courts. Whitney himself was now receiving some return
from the sales to the states, and these enabled him to keep out of
debt, but the greater part of his earnings had still to go for the
costs of his suits at law.
In December, 1807, the United States Court in Georgia gave a decision
in Whitney’s favor against a man named Fort who had infringed on his
patent. The words of Judge Johnson in this case became celebrated. “To
support the originality of the invention,” said he, “the complainants
have produced a variety of depositions of witnesses, examined under
commission, whose examinations expressly prove the origin, progress,
and completion of the machine of Whitney, one of the copartners.
Persons who were made privy to his first discovery testify to the
several experiments which he made in their presence before he ventured
to expose his invention to the scrutiny of the public eye. But it is
not necessary to resort to such testimony to maintain this point. The
jealousy of the artist to maintain that reputation, which his
ingenuity has justly acquired, has urged him to unnecessary pains on
this subject. There are circumstances in the knowledge of all mankind
which prove the originality of this invention more satisfactorily to
the mind than the direct testimony of a host of witnesses. The
cotton-plant furnished clothing to mankind before the age of
Herodotus. The green seed is a species much more productive than the
black, and by nature adapted to a much greater variety of climate, but
by reason of the strong adherence of the fibre to the seed, without
the aid of some more powerful machine for separating it than any
formerly known among us, the cultivation of it would never have been
made an object. The machine of which Mr. Whitney claims the invention
so facilitates the preparation of this species for use that the
cultivation of it has suddenly become an object of infinitely greater
national importance than that of the other species ever can be. Is it,
then, to be imagined that if this machine had been before discovered,
the use of it would ever have been lost, or could have been confined
to any tract or country left unexplored by commercial enterprise? But
it is unnecessary to remark further upon this subject. A number of
years have elapsed since Mr. Whitney took out his patent, and no one
has produced or pretended to prove the existence of a machine of
similar construction or use.
“With regard to the utility of this discovery the court would deem it
a waste of time to dwell long upon this topic. Is there a man who
hears us who has not experienced its utility? The whole interior of
the Southern states was languishing and its inhabitants emigrating for
want of some object to engage their attention and employ their
industry, when the invention of this machine at once opened views to
them which set the whole country in active motion. From childhood to
age it has presented to us a lucrative employment. Our debts have been
paid off, our capitals have increased, and our lands trebled
themselves in value. We cannot express the weight of the obligation
which the country owes to this invention. The extent of it cannot now
be seen. Some faint presentiment may be formed from the reflection
that cotton is rapidly supplanting wool, flax, silk, and even furs in
manufactures, and may one day profitably supply the use of specie in
our East India trade. Our sister states also participate in the
benefits of this invention, for besides affording the raw material for
their manufacturers, the bulkiness and quantity of the article afford
a valuable employment for their shipping.”
Whitney had fought long and hard, and had at last received at least
partial justice. But it had been so slow in coming that, when his
rights were to a certain extent established, there were only a few
years left his patents to run. He had realized for some time that he
must look elsewhere for financial returns, and so, in 1798, had begun
the manufacture of firearms. He purchased a site for his factory near
New Haven, at a place called Whitneyville now, then known as East
Rock. Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury, ordered 10,000 stand
of arms from him, and he contracted to furnish them. At first he met
with many difficulties, owing to lack of proper materials and workmen,
and his own lack of familiarity with the business. But as time went on
the works improved, and Whitney applied his inventive genius to many
important improvements. He received other contracts, and eventually
the national government came to rely upon his factory for a large part
of its war supplies.
In 1812 Whitney applied for a renewal of his patent for the
cotton-gin. He set forth the facts that he had received almost no
compensation for his invention, that it had made the fortune of many
of the Southern states, that it enabled one man to do the work of a
thousand men before, but that, placing the value of one man’s labor at
twenty cents a day, the whole amount he had received was less than the
value of the labor saved in one hour by the use of his machines
throughout the country. But again there was opposition from many
influential Southern planters, and his application was denied.
The inventor was, however, making money from his factory for firearms,
and his personal fortunes had brightened. In 1817 he married Henrietta
Edwards, the daughter of Judge Pierpont Edwards, of Connecticut. His
home life was ideally happy, he was fond of New Haven, and eventually
he received increasing evidence that the people of the cotton lands
were learning their indebtedness to him, and were anxious to make some
restitution for their earlier disregard of his claims. He died January
8, 1825.
The material value of Eli Whitney’s invention can hardly be estimated.
It opened a new kingdom to the South. It built up countless acres of
hitherto unprofitable land. But in spite of men’s recognition of the
value of his cotton-gin, and their instant adoption of it everywhere,
he was for years denied his title to it, and had to wage a warfare
that is almost without parallel in the history of American inventors.
VII
FULTON AND THE STEAMBOAT
1765-1815
There is a peculiar charm attaching to the figure of Robert Fulton,
the attraction that plays about the man who is many-sided, and
picturesque on whatever side one looks at him. He was a man at home on
both shores of the Atlantic, at a time when such men were rare. He had
been taught drawing by Major André, when the latter was a prisoner of
war in the little Pennsylvania town of Lancaster. He had hung out his
sign as Painter of Miniatures at the corner of Second and Walnut
Streets in Philadelphia, under the friendly patronage of Benjamin
Franklin. He had lodged in London at the house of Benjamin West, and
shown his pictures at the Royal Academy. Two great English noblemen
became his allies in scientific studies. Napoleon, as First Consul,
bargained with him over his invention of torpedoes. Finally he sent
the little _Clermont_ up the Hudson under steam. There was a man of
rare ability, one who had many hostages to give to fortune. He was the
artist turned inventor, as many another has done, and if he was not as
great an artist as Leonardo da Vinci neither was Leonardo as great an
inventor as Robert Fulton.
Fulton invented a machine for cutting marble, one for spinning flax,
a double inclined plane for canal navigation, a machine for twisting
rope, an earth-scoop for canal and irrigation purposes, a
cable-cutter, the earliest French panorama, a submarine torpedo boat,
and the steamboat. Other men had worked over steamboats, but he
reached the goal. He made the steamboat practicable, as Watt had the
steam-engine. Above all, he was very fortunate; he found his
countrymen ready to welcome the _Clermont_, and to fall in with his
plans, an attitude which had not faced certain men in England and in
France who had built similar boats earlier than Fulton. Some engineers
have been tempted to call him a lucky amateur, a talented artist who
happened to become interested in new methods of navigation. If one
grants all this there is still the fact that it was the _Clermont’s_
success that opened the watercourses of the world to steam.
“Quicksilver Bob” he was called as a boy in Lancaster, because he used
to buy all that metal he could for experiments. Even then he was
many-sided. He made designs for firearms and experimented with guns to
learn the carrying distance of various bores and balls. There was a
factory in Lancaster where arms were being made for the Continental
troops, and “Quicksilver Bob” was given the run of the place. In
addition he painted signs to hang before the village shops and
taverns.
To simplify his fishing expeditions he made a model of a boat
propelled by paddles, and later he built such a boat and used it on
the Conestoga River. No one could tell what he would turn to next.
When Hessian prisoners were kept in the neighborhood the town boys
would go out to look at them, and Robert would make sketches of them.
These sketches gave him a local reputation, and his friends were not
surprised when at seventeen he left Lancaster to seek his fortune as a
painter of portraits and miniatures in Philadelphia.
He was well liked in the city. He had a talent for friendship, which,
combined with good looks, more than ordinary intelligence, and most
uncommon industry, carried him far. He drew plans for machinery, he
designed houses and carriages, he worked as professional painter.
Franklin became his patron and adviser. Then illness sent him to the
fashionable hot springs of Virginia, and there he heard so much talk
of England and of France that he decided to see those countries for
himself. Before he left America he bought a farm in Washington County,
Pennsylvania, in order to insure a home for his mother and sisters.
That done, he sailed for England, with a packet of letters of
introduction, in 1786.
In London Fulton professed himself to be an artist, although his
thoughts were constantly tending toward inventions. He lived at the
house of Benjamin West, and painted, and his portraits were shown at
the Royal Academy and at the Society of Artists. Betimes he enjoyed
himself in society and in trips to the counties. He journeyed into
Devonshire and stayed at Powderham Castle, copying famous pictures
there. Wherever he went he made friends, and their influence was
constantly helping him forward on what must have been a somewhat
precarious career.
Two of these friends, the Duke of Bridgewater and the Earl of
Stanhope, were scientists of repute. The Duke owned a great estate, of
untold mineral wealth, which had never been properly worked because of
lack of transportation facilities. He had recently built several
canals on this property, and was at the head of a number of companies
which were planning to intersect England with waterways. He interested
Fulton in his schemes and gradually weaned his thoughts away from art
to civil engineering. The Earl of Stanhope corresponded with him over
the possibility of propelling boats by steam, and in these letters
Fulton first gave the outlines of the plans he was later to perfect in
the _Clermont_. The Earl was deeply interested, and encouraged the
young American to persevere, but for the time Fulton left the
steamboat to work out other problems.
The possibility of a great English canal system appealed to him
strongly, and in 1794 he obtained an English patent for a double
inclined plane for raising and lowering canal boats. Later he took
English patents on a machine for spinning flax, and on a new device
for twisting hemp rope. There followed others for a machine that
should scoop out earth to make canals or aqueducts, for a “Market or
Passage Boat” to use on canals, and for a “Dispatch Boat” that should
travel quickly. He sent drawings of all these inventions to his
influential friends, hoping that they would push them, and he also
wrote and published “A Treatise on Canal Navigation.” By this time he
would seem to have given up all thought of the artist’s career, and
to have turned his talent with the pen to the aid of his mechanical
drawings.
The French Revolution was imminent, and Fulton was busy studying the
conditions that were leading to it. He believed that Free Trade would
tend to abolish many of the difficulties that divided nations, and he
wrote a paper on that subject, addressed to the French Directory. He
believed in democracy, but he was strongly of the opinion that the
young American republic should take no part in the struggle for
liberty in Europe. In a letter written in 1794 he says, “It has been
much Agitated here whether the Americans would join the French. But I
Believe every Cool friend to America could wish them to Remain nuter.
The americans have no troublesome Neighbors, they are without foreign
Possessions, and do not want the alliance of any Nation, for this
Reason they have nothing to do with foreign Politics. And the Art of
Peace Should be the Study of every young American which I most
Sincerely hope they will maintain.”
But Fulton himself was in a manner to be drawn into the turmoil. When
France had quieted somewhat England began that policy of aggression on
the sea toward American ships and crews that was to lead to the War of
1812. Fulton’s attention was drawn from canal-building to the
possibility of some invention that might tend to subserve peace, and
this in time led him to design and build the first torpedo.
Again Fulton’s talent for friendship stood him in good stead. When he
had left London for Paris he called upon Joel Barlow, poet and
American diplomat, and was urged to take up his residence first at the
hotel where the Barlows were staying, and later at their house. For
seven years Fulton lived with them, busy about the most diverse
matters, and always keenly interested in the struggles of the new and
hot-tempered republic. A rich American had bought a tract of central
real estate in Paris and had built a row of shops arranged on the two
sides of a cloister. Fulton suggested that he add a panorama to the
other buildings, and the idea was adopted. Fulton was given charge,
and by 1800 he had built and opened the first panorama that Paris had
ever seen. The show made money, and the inventor, a perfect
Jack-of-all-trades, added another feather to his varicolored cap.
In December, 1797, Fulton had interested his friend Barlow in a
machine intended to drive “carcasses” of gunpowder under water. But
his first experiments at exploding the gunpowder at a definite moment
failed. Then he moved to Havre, where he would have greater
opportunity to try out his torpedo-boats, as he christened them. His
idea was that if his invention succeeded war would be made so
dangerous that nations would be obliged to keep peace. Barlow was able
to assist him with money until he had built and actually navigated
some of his torpedoes along the coast. When he had satisfied himself,
he wrote to the French government, the Directory, offering them his
invention for use against their enemies.
The Directory was pleased with the offer, but the government was in
so much of a turmoil that it was months before any positive action was
taken. At length, on February 28, 1801, Fulton received word from
Napoleon, the First Consul, to send his torpedo-boat against the
English fleet. He set out; but the English fleet did not come his way,
and he spent the summer vainly reconnoitering along the coast. To show
the value of his invention he arranged to attack a sloop. This he
described in his letter to the French Commission on Submarine
Navigation. “To prove this experiment,” he wrote, “the Prefect
Maritime and Admiral Villaret ordered a small Sloop of about 40 feet
long to be anchored in the Road, on the 23rd of Thermidor. With a bomb
containing about 20 pounds of powder I advanced to within 200 Metres,
then taking my direction so as to pass near the Sloop, I struck her
with the bomb in my passage. The explosion took place and the sloop
was torn into atoms, in fact, nothing was left but the buye [buoy] and
cable. And the concussion was so great that a column of Water, Smoke
and fibres of the Sloop were cast from 80 to 100 feet in Air. This
simple Experiment at once proved the effect of the Bomb Submarine to
the satisfaction of all the Spectators.”
This exhibition took place in August, 1801, before a crowd of
onlookers, and at once established the value of the torpedo. But, as
he was unable to attack any English ships, the French government lost
interest in his invention, and Napoleon’s scientific advisers reported
to him that they regarded the young American as “a visionary.”
At the same time the British government awakened to the great
possibilities of Fulton’s device. His old friend, Lord Stanhope, urged
that suitable offers be made him. This was ultimately done, and in
April, 1804, Fulton left France and returned to London. A contract was
drawn up by which he was to put his torpedo at the service of the
English government and receive in return two hundred pounds a month
and one-half the value of all ships that might be destroyed by his
invention.
This arrangement, however, was of short duration. A change of ministry
dampened his hopes, and in 1806 the government declined to adopt his
invention on his terms. At the same time they tried to suppress this
new method of warfare, and to that end made him another offer. Fulton,
always an ardent patriot, answered, “At all events, whatever may be
your reward, I will never consent to let these inventions lie dormant
should my Country at any time have need of them. Were you to grant me
an annuity of £20,000 a year, I would sacrifice all to the safety &
independence of my Country. But I hope that England and America will
understand their mutual Interest too well to War with each other And I
have no desire to Introduce my Engines into practice for the benefit
of any other Nation.”
He was already eager to return home to work upon his long cherished
plans for a steamboat. He continues, “As I am bound in honor to Mr.
Livingston to put my steamboat in practice and such engine is of more
immediate use to my Country than Submarine Navigation, I wish to
devote some years to it and should the British Government allow me an
annuity I should not only do justice to my friends but it would enable
me to carry my steamboat and other plans into effect for the good of
my Country.--It has never been my intention to hide these Inventions
from the World on any consideration, on the contrary it has been my
intention to make them public as soon as consistent with strict
justice to all with whom I am concerned. For myself I have ever
considered the interest of America [n] free commerce, the interest of
mankind, the magnitude of the object in view and the rational
reputation connected with it superior to all calculations of a
pecuniary kind.”
Satisfactory terms of agreement were reached, and in 1806 Fulton was
free and ready to return to that native land from which he had been
away twenty years.
The building of a practicable steamboat had long been in his mind. He
had corresponded on the subject with Chancellor Livingston, who had
devoted much time and money to new inventions. Fulton, when in Paris,
had experimented with models of steamboats, and had studied the
records of what had already been done in that line. In 1802 he had
started a course of calculations on the resistance of water, and the
comparative advantages of the known means of propelling vessels. He
had rejected the plan of using paddles or oars, and also of forcing
water out of the stern of the vessel, and had retained the idea of the
paddle-wheel. This he tried successfully on a small model that he
built and used on a river that ran through the village of Plombières.
He then built an experimental boat, sixty-six feet long and eight
feet wide, and this he exhibited to a large audience of Parisians in
August, 1803. His success led him to order certain parts of a
steam-engine from the firm of Boulton and Watt in Birmingham, these to
be shipped to America. Meantime Chancellor Livingston had obtained for
himself and Fulton the exclusive right to navigate the waters of New
York state by vessels propelled by fire or steam.
As soon as he reached America in December, 1806, Fulton started work
on his boat. He engaged Charles Brownne, a ship-builder on the East
River, to lay down the hull. He decided to name the vessel the
_Clermont_, the name of Chancellor Livingston’s country-place on the
Hudson, where Fulton had been a guest. The engine duly arrived from
Birmingham and was carried to the shipyard. As a number of loafers and
hangers-on about the docks threatened injury to “Fulton’s Folly,” as
the building boat was called, he had to engage watchmen to guard his
property. By August the boat was finished, and was moved by her own
engine from the yards to the Jersey shore. She was one hundred and
fifty feet long, thirteen feet wide, and drew two feet of water.
Before she had gone a quarter of a mile both passengers and observers
on the shore were satisfied that the steamboat was a thoroughly
practicable vessel.
On Sunday, August 9, 1807, Fulton made a short trial trip of the
_Clermont_, and wrote an account of it to Livingston. “Yesterday about
12 o’clock I put the steamboat in motion first with a paddle 8 inches
broad, 3 feet long, with which I ran about one mile up the East River
against a tide of about one mile an hour, it being nearly high
water. I then anchored and put on another paddle 8 inches wide, 3 feet
long, started again and then, according to my best observations, I
went 3 miles an hour, that is two against a tide of one: another board
of 8 inches was wanting, which had not been prepared, I therefore
turned the boat and ran down with the tide--and turned her round
neatly into the berth from which I parted. She answers the helm equal
to anything that ever was built, and I turned her twice in three times
her own length. Much has been proved by this experiment. First that
she will, when in complete order, run up to my full calculations.
Second, that my axles, I believe, will be sufficiently strong to run
the engine to her full power. Third, that she steers well, and can be
turned with ease.”
[Illustration: “THE CLERMONT,” THE FIRST STEAM PACKET]