Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 7.djvu/375

 INVENTORS OR MARTYRS TO SCIENCE.

��337

��fied, senatorial manner, " how would any person like to have a railroad un- der his parlor window?" " What, I should like to know," said he, " is to be done with all those who have ad- vanced money in making and repair- ing turnpikes? What with those who may still wish to travel in their own or hired carriages, after the fashion of their forefathers? Wiiat is to become of coach-maker;^, harness-makers, and coachmen, innkeepers, horse breeders, and horse dealers? Is the house aware of the smoke and noise, the hiss and the whirl which locomotive engines, passing at a rate of eight or ten miles an hour, occasion? Neither the cattle plowing in the fields, nor grazing in the meadows, could be- hold them without dismay. Iron would rise in price one hundred per cent., or more probably be exhausted altogether. It would be the greatest nuisance, the most complete disturb- ance of quiet and comfort, in all parts of the kingdom, that the ingenuity of man could invent." Such were the sroans of consternation. The bill was at last obtained, at an expense of $135,000, and within one year after the road was built, the land all along the line was selling at fabulous prices, and travel was tripled the first year. Annual saving to the public in money, $1,250,000. The noblemen who re- sisted the bill to the last, soon patron- ized a rival road, on condition that it should pass through their estates. It is self-interest that enlightens the blind. Prejudices and habits form an invinci- ble coat of mail to the conservative.

In too many cases the real inventor does not get the honor. If language was invented to conceal thought, his-

��tory too often is so written as to con- ceal facts, — or, as some one puts it, "Average history — ingenious fiction." The first steamboat on American waters is generally understood to have been made by Fulton — its first voyage, in 1807, from New York to Albany. But it can be shown that a steamboat had been constructed and successfully propelled by steam power, prior to this date.

The credit of inventing, building, and successfully working the first steamboat in America is due to a self- educated New Englander, a native of Connecticut, whose ancestors were from the old Bay State, but whose family, while he was yet a child, emi- grated to northern New Hampshire, where he built the first steamboat in this country, if not in the world, pro- pelled by paddle-wheels moved by a steam engine, and put it to a success- ful test upon the waters of the upper Connecticut river as early as 1792 or 1793. It is only justice to Mr. Ful- ton to own that he was the first man, aided by Chancellor Livingstone's money, to make a practical business success of a steamboat. He did build a boat which was successfully propelled by steam by means of paddle wheels, and he is perhaps properly cal'ed the father of American steamboat naviga- tion. But to the question. Was he the originator of the plan? Was the the inventor? Did he make the first paddle-wheel steamboat that worked successfully? We an- swer. No. In the life of Fulton we find this fact : A Captain Morey, of Oi-ford, New Hampshire, for a long time devoted himself largely to exper- iments upon light, heat, and steam.

�� �