Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/333

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Society, No. 226 West Fifty-seventh Street, and rare manuscripts and books on the same subject may be seen at the College of the City of New York, St. Nicholas Avenue and 138th Street.

As is the case with all great inventions, steam navigation was not the work of one man alone, although Robert Fulton was the first to apply it consequently and permanently. Epoch-making inventions have usually been the work of a group of men pursuing the same end, often independently of each other, but the credit and glory of success is reserved for that one of them who possesses the energy and persistence requisite for ultimate triumph. Before Fulton built the Clermont, John Fitch had constructed a boat operated and propelled by steam, and John Stevens had already sailed a steamboat, his Phœnix being undoubtedly the first steamboat to sail on the ocean; but Fulton applied the ideas of Fitch and improved upon them to such an extent that he is rightly regarded as the parent of steam navigation. Aided by the advice of Chancellor Livingston, he secured a sort of monopoly in steamship building and his name will always be remembered among those of the great benefactors of humanity.

The portrait of Fulton by Benjamin West is justly regarded as one