The Story of Our Country / Every Child Can Read

by Unknown

First, I must ask you to go back with me to a kitchen in Scotland many years ago. On the open hearth of that kitchen a bright fire blazed, and near by sat a thoughtful-faced boy, with his eyes fixed on the tea-kettle which was boiling away over the fire, while its lid kept lifting to let the steam escape. His mother, who was bustling about, no doubt thought him idle, and may have scolded him a little. But he was far from idle; he was busy at work—not with his hands, but with his brain. The brain, you know, may be hard at work while the body is doing nothing.

How many of you have seen the lid of a kettle of boiling water keeping up its clatter as the steam lifts it and puffs out into the air? And what thought has this brought into your mind? Into the mind of little James Watt, the Scotch boy, it brought one great thought, that of power. As he looked at it, he said to himself that the steam which comes from boiling water must have a great deal of force, if a little of it could keep the kettle lid clattering up and down; and he asked himself if such a power could not be put to some good use.

Our Scotch boy was not the first one to have that thought. Others had thought the same thing, and steam had been used to move a poor sort of engine. But what James Watt did when he grew up, was to invent a much better engine than had ever been made before. It was a great day for us all when that engine was invented. Before that time men had done most of the work of the world with their hands, and you may imagine that the work went on very slowly. Since that time most of the world's work has been done with the aid of the steam-engine, and one man can do as much as many men could do in the past. You have seen the wheels rolling and heard the machines rattling and the hammers clanging in our great factories and workshops. And I fancy most of you know that back of all these is the fire under the boilers and the steam in the engine, the mighty magician which sets all these wheels and machines at work and changes raw material into so many things of use and beauty.

Now let us come back to our American inventors. I have spoken about the steam engine because it was with this that most of them worked. They thought that if horses could drag a wagon over the ground and the wind could drive a vessel through the water, steam might do the same thing, and they set themselves to see in what way a carriage or a boat could be moved by a steam engine.

Very likely you have all heard about Robert Fulton and his steamboat, but you may not know that steamboats were running on American waters years before that of Fulton was built. Why, as long ago as 1768, before the Revolutionary War, Oliver Evans, one of our first inventors, had made a little boat which was moved by steam and paddle-wheels. Years afterwards he made a large engine for a boat at New Orleans. It was put in the boat, but there came a dry season and low water, so that the boat could not be used, and the owners took the engine out and set it to work on a sawmill. It did so well there that it was never put back in the boat; so that steamboat never had a chance.

Oliver Evans was the first man to make a steamboat, but there were others who thought they could move a boat by steam. Some of these were in Europe and some in America. Down in Virginia was an inventor named Rumsey who moved a boat at the speed of four miles an hour. In this boat jets of water were pumped through the stern and forced the boat along. In Philadelphia was another man named John Fitch, who was the first man to make a successful steamboat. His boat was moved with paddles like an Indian canoe. It was put on the Delaware River, between Philadelphia and Trenton in 1790, and ran for several months as a passenger boat, at the speed of seven or eight miles an hour. Poor John Fitch! He was unfortunate and in the end he killed himself.

I am glad to be able to tell you a different story of the next man who tried to make a steamboat. His name was Robert Fulton. He was born in Pennsylvania, and as a boy was very fond of the water, he and the other boys having an old flatboat which they pushed along with a pole. Fulton got tired of this way of getting along, and like a natural-born inventor set his wits to work. In the end he made two paddle-wheels which hung over the sides and could be moved in the water by turning a crank and so force the boat onward. The boys found this much easier than the pole, and likely enough young Fulton thought a large vessel might be moved in the same way.

He knew all about what others had done. He had heard how Rumsey moved his boat by pumping water through the stern, and Fitch by paddling it along. And he had seen a boat in Scotland moved by a stern paddle-wheel. I fancy he had not forgotten the side paddle-wheel he made as a boy to go fishing with, for when he set out to invent his steamboat this is the plan he tried.

Fulton made his first boat in France, but he had bad luck there. Then he came to America and built a boat in New York. While he was at work on this boat in America, James Watt, of whom I have already told you, was building him an engine in England. He wanted the best engine that he could get, and he thought the Scotch inventor was the right man to make it.

While Fulton was working some of the smart New Yorkers were laughing. They called his boat "Fulton's Folly," and said it would not move faster than the tide would carry it. But he let them laugh and worked on, and at last, one day in 1807, the new boat, which he named the "Clermont," was afloat in the Hudson ready for trial. Hundreds of curious people came to see it start. Some were ready to laugh again when they saw the boat, with its clumsy paddle-wheels hanging down in the water on both sides. They were not covered with wooden frames as were such wheels afterwards.