Napoleon, who was then emperor of the French, wrote to one of his own advisers:
“I have just received the project of Citizen Fulton, which you have sent me too late—since it may change the face of the world!”
But, harmful as Fulton’s submarine might have proven to Napoleon’s enemies, the chance which Napoleon missed was not important compared with the results of Robert Fulton’s next invention.
Robert Fulton had, as a lad, gone fishing with some neighbors on a flatboat in the river. This craft they had to push along with poles, which was very slow, hard work. Bob began at once to try to fix something which would make the boat go faster and more easily. He arranged paddles at the stern which worked quite well. Then he improved this by making paddle wheels. After that he attached the wheels to an engine. He went on working with engines and wheels until at last, while he was in Paris, he succeeded in building a boat with a steam-engine to make it go. He tried it on the River Seine, which flows through Paris. The boat did go a little; but the engine was too heavy, and the watching crowds saw Fulton’s queer boat sink to the bottom.
After he returned to America, Fulton went on improving his steamboat until he had built one which he thought would run up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany. He named this odd-looking craft the Clermont, and invited a few of his friends to make the trial trip. A great crowd came down to the wharf in New York City to have a little fun watching “Fulton’s Folly,” as they called the steamboat. People laughed at the idea that a heavy iron engine could make a boat go anywhere but to the bottom.
Even Fulton’s friends, waiting on the deck of the queer-looking vessel, felt foolish and looked anxious. The boat, however, started off, and the people on the shore began to cheer. Out in the river it stopped like a balky horse, and the cheers were turned to jeers. Fulton looked hurriedly at the engine, found out what was the trouble, and soon fixed it. Then the boat went puffing away up the river against the current at the rate of six miles an hour, and the friends on deck thought they were going very fast, as there were no railroads then and this was faster than a sailboat could go. Fulton kept on improving his boats so that within a few years there were steamboats on other rivers of the country. Within a century “ocean greyhounds” were racing across the Atlantic, and “superdreadnoughts,” the largest battleships, were being built for the great navies of the world. Submarines were used by many nations in the World War, but their invention, important as it was, could not well be called the greatest event of the century. It was the sailing of “Fulton’s Folly” which might have been said to change the face of the world, because it was the first step on the way to the wonderful steamships of to-day.
Just as that ingenious little boy tried to help his friends by making their flatboat run faster so Robert Fulton, as a man, had made the people of the world richer, happier, and better for all the ages to come.
