You will notice that Fulton says that Lord Courtenay had introduced him to all his friends. Among them were two men of rank and high intelligence, the Duke of Bridgewater and Earl Stanhope, whose influence at this time seems partly responsible for a sudden change in Fulton’s line of thought.
The Duke of Bridgewater owned vast coal mines. He sold their product in the growing town of Manchester where coal was in demand for the many factories; but every load had to be carried upon the backs of pack horses and the transportation was slow and difficult. The duke had been trying to find an easier way and, by the advice of a clever workman, he had opened a canal through his land, and shipped the coal on barges. This plan worked well and wealth began to pour into the duke’s coffers. This led to his desire to dig canals throughout England so that produce from farms might easily be sold. The idea was not new, for such waterways had already been used in Europe and in Asia; but the duke’s way of building them was somewhat novel, and one of the great difficulties he encountered was that of overcoming the many different water levels.
When we recall the old-time methods,—stage-coaches lumbering their slow way along post-roads; sailing vessels tacking their roundabout paths across the oceans; and harvests wilting on the ground because farmers had no way to send them to the cities where the hungry would gladly have bought them;—when we remember all this we can quickly realize why the thoughtful men of the world were beginning to try to plan new and better ways of transportation.
Robert Fulton could look back in thought to his boyhood days in Lancaster, and recall the story of the enrichment of certain farmlands by a clever Swiss settler, who had watered a whole range of hitherto barren land, by simply cutting trenches along the side of a hill, wherein water was conducted, from upper springs, to the thirsty lands below. The digging of channels to form watercourses was not new; it had proved its value.
Inspired by the need of the Duke of Bridgewater, and impressed by the money earned by his simple device, Robert Fulton set himself to study out a better way to build canals.
In fact, about this time he appears to have been pondering on many practical methods to simplify work. He visited the stone and marble quarries in Devonshire and found that the digging and raising of the heavy products was extremely hard work. His first invention was a mill for sawing marble and stone, which proved so successful that when Fulton returned to London in the autumn he sent his model to the Society of Arts, Commerce and Manufactures and received a silver medal and the thanks of the society.
Two talents were now striving for expression in Fulton’s active mind, art and science. One or the other had to have his full devotion; and about this time he seems to have laid aside his brushes, with all their charm and the rewards which he was just beginning to realize, and to have deliberately taken up the practical problems of invention.
This change was not because he did not love art, for throughout the remainder of his life he continued, from time to time, to paint portraits; he was ever a devoted patron and friend of art, but there was not time for both professions, and that of the inventor now made the stronger appeal.
The everyday needs were those which won Fulton’s earliest attention. He made a machine for spinning flax, perhaps in thought of his patient mother at home, working at her old-time spinning-wheel; and he next produced a machine for making rope. It stood in a room forty feet square and could be worked by one man, twisting cordage of any size and winding rope yarn on spools.
In these inventions Fulton saw an opportunity to help mankind to better and easier methods of work, and also a way of securing a competence. His vision was wide; humanity was one family, and the round world provided a vast field for labor. It is not probable that he could have gained this view of life if he had tarried in quiet Lancaster.