Rumsey's claim to the idea of application of steam in 1785 does not seem to hold good. General Washington, to whom he referred as to a conversation in 1785, replied to a correspondent that the idea of Rumsey, as he remembered and understood it, was simply the propelling of a boat by a machine, the power of which was to be merely manual labor.
Robert Fulton was born in 1765, and at the time of Symington's experiment in Scotland, was twenty-three years of age. He was then an artist student of Benjamin West, in London, but, after several years of study, felt that he was better adapted for engineering, and soon thereafter wrote a work on canal navigation. In 1797 he went to Paris. He resided there seven years and built a small steamboat on the Seine, which worked well, but made very slow progress.
It is remarkable that the two most practical achievements of our century have been consummated by artists,—[page 152] the telegraph by Morse after a score of "invented" failures, and the successful application of steam to navigation by Fulton.
I was glad to think that among the last memorable
beauties which have glided past us were pictures traced
by no common hand, not easily to grow old or fade beneath
the dust of time—the Kaatskill Mountains, Sleepy
Hollow and the Tappan Zee.
Charles Dickens.