Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 5).djvu/707

Rh was one of the joint commissioners for defining the boundary-line between New York and that colony in November, 1774. Resigning as a royalist councillor in June, 1776, he was, from 27 Aug., 1776, till 1782, vice-president of the council of New Jersey, presiding over the joint meetings of the two branches of the legislature. He was elected to the Federal congress in November, 1783, and on 18 Dec., 1787, he presided over the State convention that ratified the United States constitution. His son. John, engineer, b. in New York city in 1748 or 1749: d. at Hoboken, N. J., 6 March, 1838, was graduated at King's (now Columbia) college in 1768, and was admitted to the bar, but practised little. During the Revolutionary war he held several offices, among which was that of treasurer of New Jersey in 1770-'9, and at its close he married and resided in winter on Broadway, New York, and in summer on the island of Hoboken, which he then owned. His life was devoted to experiments at his own cost for the common good. In 1790 he petitioned congress for protection to American inventors, and his petition was referred to a committee, which reported a bill that became the law of 10 April, 1790, the foundation of the American patent law. He had begun experiments in the application of steam in 1788, and now continued them, having as his associates Nicholas I. Roosevelt and the elder Brunel, who afterward built the Thames tunnel. Toward the close of the century he was engaged with his brother-in-law, Robert R. Livingston, and Roosevelt, in building a steamboat to navigate Hudson river, the legislature of the state of New York having previously offered a monopoly of exclusive privilege to the owners of a boat that, complying with given conditions, should attain a speed of three miles an hour: but their boat failed to achieve the required speed, and their joint proceedings were interrupted by the appointment of Livingston as minister to France in 1801. In Paris, Livingston met Robert Fulton, and afterward was associated with him in establishing steam navigation. Stevens persevered, and in 1804 built a vessel propelled by twin screws that navigated the Hudson. The boiler was tubular and the screw was identically the short, four-threaded screw that is now used. That it was a helix, his letter of 1804 to Dr. Robert Hare, of Philadelphia, shows. This was the first application of steam to the screw-propeller. The engine and boiler of this steamboat are preserved in the Stevens institute at Hoboken, N. J. Mr. Stevens always upheld the efficiency of the screw and its great advantages for ocean navigation. Shortly after his death his sons placed the engine and boiler referred to in a boat, which was tried before a committee of the American institute of New York, and attained a speed of about nine miles an hour.

It is remarkable that after 1804 no serious attempt was made for the practical introduction of the screw until 1837, when it was brought into use simultaneously in England and the United States. Still more remarkable is the fact that its introduction into use in England was by the Archimedian screw of a single thread, and in America by a multi-threaded screw on the outer surface of a cylinder: that the first was completely modified in the course of five or six years into the short four-threaded screw that was used by Stevens in 1804, and that in about ten years the multi-threaded screw was also replaced by the screw of 1804. In 1807, assisted by his son Robert, he built the paddle-wheel steamboat "Phoenix" that plied for six years on the Delaware. Prof. James Renwick, who from his own observation has left the best description extant of Fulton's boat, the "Clermont," as she ran in the autumn of 1807, says that "the Stevenses were but a few days later in moving a boat with the required velocity," and that "being shut out of the waters of New York by the monopoly of Livingston and Fulton, Stevens conceived the bold design of conveying his boat to the Delaware by sea, and this boat, which was so near reaping the honor of first success, was the first to navigate the ocean by the power of steam." Fulton had the advantage of a steam-engine that was made by James Watt, while his predecessors were provided only with inferior apparatus, the work of common blacksmiths and millwrights. The piston-rod of the "Phoenix" was guided by slides instead of the parallel motion of Watt, and the cylinder rested on the condenser. Stevens also surrounded the water-wheel by a guard-beam. Among the patents that were taken out by Stevens was one in 1791 for generating steam ; two in the same year described as improvements in bellows and on Thomas Savary's engine, both designed for pumping; the multi-tubular boiler in 1803, which was patented in England in 1805 in the name of his eldest son, John C. ; one in 1816 for using slides; an improvement in rack railroads in 1824 ; and one in 1824 to render shallow rivers more navigable. In 1812 he made the first experiments with artillery against iron armor. He then proposed a circular vessel, to be rotated by steam to train the guns for the defence of New York harbor. On 11 Oct., 1811, he established the first steam-ferry in the world with the "Juliana," which plied between New York city and Hoboken. In 1813 he invented and built a ferry-boat made of two separate boats, with a paddle-wheel between them which was turned by six horses. On account of the simplicity of its construction and its economy, this description of horse-boat continued long in use both on the East river and on the Hudson.

In February, 1812, shortly before the war with England and five years before the beginning of the Erie canal, Stevens addressed a memoir to the commission appointed to devise water-communication between the seaboard and the lakes, urging instead of a canal the immediate construction of a railroad. This memoir, with the adverse report of the commissioners, among whom were De Witt Clinton, Gouverneur Morris, and Chancellor Livingston, was published at the time, and again, with a preface, by Charles King, president of Columbia, in 1852, and by the "Railroad Gazette" in 1882. The correctness of his views and arguments contrast strongly with the answer of the commissioners on the impracticability of a railroad. At the date of the memoir, although short railroads for carrying coal had been in use in England for upward of 200 years, there was not a locomotive or passenger-car in use in the world. Stevens's proposal was to build a passenger and freight railroad for general traffic from Albany to Lake Erie having a double track, made with wood-