Fulton was fortunate in making the first really successful attempt at propelling boats by steam, but Fitch came very near reaping the honors for this invention. The account of Fitch's life and experiments, written by himself and now in the possession of the Franklin Library of Philadelphia, clearly shows that this unhappy genius really deserves to share in Fulton's glory. Fitch was born in Connecticut, in January, 1743, more than twenty years before Fulton. He was a farmer's boy and picked up knowledge as best he could. Before he was twenty he had learned clock-making and then button-making. It was in 1788 that he obtained his first patent for a steamboat. His experimental boat was an extraordinary affair, fully described in the Columbian (Philadelphia) Magazine for December, 1786. Its motive power consisted of a clumsy engine that moved horizontal bars, upon which were fastened a number of oars or paddles. So far as possible the machine imitated the movements of a man rowing. This boat made eight miles an hour in calm water. Finding nothing but ridicule for his project here, as his steamboat cost too much money to run as a commercial undertaking, Fitch went to Europe, and was equally unsuccessful there. There is still in existence a letter from him in which he predicts that steam would some day carry vessels across the Atlantic. He died in 1796, without having contributed more than a curiosity to the art of steam navigation.
Another early inventor was Oliver Evans, who has been called the Watt of America. In 1804 Evans offered to build for the Lancaster Turnpike Company a steam-carriage to carry one hundred barrels of flour fifty miles in twenty-four hours. The offer was derided. Here is one of Evans's predictions written at about this time: "The time will come when people will travel in stages, moved by steam-engines, from one city to another, almost as fast as birds fly, fifteen or twenty miles an hour. Passing through the air with such velocity, changing the scene with such rapid succession, will be the most rapid, exhilarating exercise. A carriage (steam) will set out from Washington in the morning, the passengers will breakfast at Baltimore, dine at Philadelphia, and sup in New York the same day. To accomplish this, two sets of railways will be laid so nearly level as not in any way to deviate more than two degrees from a horizontal line, made of wood, or iron, or smooth paths of broken stone or gravel, with a rail to guide the carriages so that they may pass each other in different directions and travel by night as well as by day. Engines will drive boats ten or twelve miles per hour, and there will be many hundred steamboats running on the Mississippi." In 1805 Evans built a steam-carriage propelled by a sort of paddle-wheel at the stern, the paddles touching the ground. This apparatus he named the "Oructor Amphibolis," and it is believed to have been the first application of steam in America to the propelling of land carriages. He died in 1819 without having seen his steam-carriage come to anything practicable. He made a fortune, however, from some patents upon flour-mill improvements.
Amos Whittemore and Thomas Blanchard.
In the domain of textile fabrics Amos Whittemore, the Massachusetts inventor of the card-machine, which did away with the old-fashioned method of making cards for cotton and woollen factories, must be mentioned. Before Whittemore's machine came into use, about 1812, such cards were made by hand, the laborer sticking one by one into sheets of leather the wire staples, which operation gave work to thousands of families in New England early in the century. Whittemore made a fortune by his invention, and devoted the last years of his life to astronomy.
Another Massachusetts boy, Thomas Blanchard, invented the lathe for turning irregular objects, and well deserves mention. Born in 1788, he was noted as a boy for his efficiency in the New England accomplishment of whittling, making wonderful windmills and water-wheels with his knife. When thirteen years old he made an apple-paring machine, with which at the "paring bees" held in the neighborhood he could accomplish more than a dozen girls. Soon after this achievement he began helping his brother in the manufacture of tacks. The operation consisted in stamping them out from a thin plate of iron, after which they were taken up, one at a time, with the thumb and finger and caught in a tool worked by the foot, while a blow given simultaneously with a hammer held in the right hand made a flat head of the large end of the tack projecting above the face of the vise. This was the only method then known, and it was so slow and irksome that young Blanchard often grew disgusted. As a daily task he was given a certain quantity of tacks to make, which number was ascertained by counting. Finding this much trouble, he constructed a counting-machine, consisting of a ratchet-wheel which moved one tooth every time the jaws of the heading tool or vise moved in the process of making a tack. From this achievement he passed to a tack machine, and after six years of hard work turned out an apparatus that made five hundred tacks a minute. He sold his patent for the trifle of $5,000.
With part of this money he began his experiments in turning musket-barrels, an operation that was simple enough except at the breech, where the flat and oval sides had to be ground down or chipped. Blanchard made a lathe that turned the whole barrel satisfactorily. While exhibiting his new lathe at the United States Armory at Springfield, occurred the incident that led to Blanchard's great device for turning irregular forms. One of the men employed in cutting musket-stocks remarked that Blanchard could never spoil his job, for he could not turn a gun-stock. The remark struck Blanchard, who replied, "I am not so sure of that, but will think of it a while." The result of six months' study was the lathe with which such articles as gun-stocks, shoe-lasts, hat-blocks, tackle-blocks, axe-handles, wig-blocks, and a thousand other objects of irregular shape may now be turned. While at Washington getting his patent, Blanchard exhibited his machine at the War Office, where many heads of departments had assembled. Among the rest was a navy commissioner, who, after listening to Blanchard, remarked to the inventor: "Can you turn a seventy-four?"
"Yes," was the reply, "if you will furnish the block." Blanchard afterward made many interesting experiments in steam-carriages, but his chief claim to fame rests upon his lathe.