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or more miles an hour, and from her resistance also show what should be the power of the steam-engine to drive her the required velocity, then show what should be the size of the wheel-boards, which take the purchase on the water, and their speed compared to the speed of the boat, all of which were necessary to be ascertained, selected, and combined before any one could originate a useful steamboat; and it was for want of such selection and just combination of first principles, founded on the laws of nature, that every attempt at constructing useful steamboats previous to mine failed. But, now that they are discovered and carried into practice on the great scale, you and Mr. Dodd can copy them, and have copied them exact. This is proved by the affidavits of many experienced and respectable engineers, and will be acknowledged by every one who has the least information on mechanical combinations; yet neither you nor Mr. Dodd, possessed as you are of Charnock's book, now know the principles which originated and govern the construction of steamboats, nor can you find them in that book or any other.

But, as you have looked much into books, models, and abortive experiments to prove steamboats an old invention, can you show any publication, model, or work that distinctly points out what the power of the engine must be to drive the boat the required velocity? or any work that distinctly shows the best mode for taking the purchase on the water, whether by oars, paddles, shulls, endless chains, ducks' feet, valves, or wheels? or what should be the size of the paddle-boards and their velocity? No, sir, you cannot. These indispensable first principles are nowhere to be found except in my patent. They are the discovery, the invention, which caused success. Previous to my experiments all was doubt and conjecture. No one could tell the requisite power of the engine, no one had determined the best mode for taking the purchase on the water or the powers and velocities of the component parts. If they had, why did you not avail yourself of them, and construct a useful steamboat ten years ago? If those proportions and powers, which are now demonstrated by actual practice in my boats on the great scale, and where every intelligent blacksmith and carpenter can go and measure them, copy them, and make a successful steamboat, were formerly known, how is it that Mr. Stevens, Chancellor Livingston, Mr. Rumsey, Mr. Fitch, Lord Stanhope, and Oliver Evans could not find them in

twenty years' labor and at the expense of $100,000? Why were not steamboats made ten years ago? for Charnock's book has been published fifteen years. And here let me present to you a curious fact: the experiments in that book were in great part conducted by Lord Stanhope, who himself since failed in his experiments on steamboats; and, if you have not yet so far affected my character for truth that my countrymen will cease to believe me, I will state another fact: he (Lord Stanhope) in October, 1806, told me in London that I could not construct a successful steamboat on the principles and combinations I proposed and which I now practise with complete success. Consequently, that book does not show how to construct a steamboat any more than the multiplication table shows how to calculate an eclipse; yet the multiplication table is useful to those who know how to apply it to that purpose. But, now that I have succeeded, contrary to all public belief, though, as you say, without the merit of invention, you collect a basket of scraps, conjectures, and abortive essays, out of which, by a kind of magical sophistry, you attempt to place before a discerning committee a successful steamboat of some twenty years old. Suppose you were to collect a basket of old ballads and bad verse without ideas, but rhyming and containing the twenty-four letters of the alphabet, could you not from those parts used by Pope prove that he did not conceive or invent the Dunciad or Essay on Man and Criticism? Or, could you or Mr. Dodd have got his manuscript and put the strokes on his t's, might you not insist that you had made an important improvement, then print and sell the poems as your own? for such is exactly the kind of improvements you and Mr. Dodd have made on steamboats. But there is not so much to be made by such improvements on poetry as by moving parallel links from one part of a steam-engine to another: hence avarice suffers poets, particularly bad ones, to be tranquil, nor does it interfere with unsuccessful mechanicians. It is only the successful artists - they who really benefit their country — that are fit subjects for plunder. Cupidity never encroached

on Fitch or Rumsey or on Lord Stanhope. fortunate as to succeed and exhibit profits.

They were not so
It even left tran-

quillity to me in 1807 and 1808. In those years the permafully established nor the profits visible, Then envy and avarice combined to Yet with these facts, known to every

nent success was not but in 1809 they were. destroy the inventor.

candid man in this State, you say steamboats are an old invention; and you have purchased from Fitch's heirs all their right to his invention. But his heirs, however, had no right; for his patent had expired five years before you purchased, and his invention, if good for anything, is public property. But, now that you have purchased Fitch's invention, as you say, for a valuable consideration, but, as it is believed at Trenton, for a mere nominal sum, that you might possess a phantom to frighten me or to perform in your exhibitions to the public, why have you not built your boat like his, with paddles behind and chain communications? It must be that you had not so much confidence in his invention as in mine; and for the good reason that he failed, but I had succeeded. And now, sir, permit me to make a remark on your logic. You say Fitch is an inventor, that his invention merits protection; yet you do not use any one part of it. There is no part of his invention in your boat Sea Horse. Mr. Daniel D. Dodd is also an inventor, as you say, of one link in your great chain of argument; and yet Fulton, who investigated and combined just principles, constructed and gave to the world steamboats at the time the world had not one steamboat and the project was deemed visionary, this Fulton, according to your logic, is an impostor and no inventor. Why, sir, there is something so flimsy and totally ignorant of mechanical combination and inventor's rights in all these, your assertions, that it is an insult on common sense to state them to any man who has the least penetration.

Having said so much, I have sent to Albany a copy of that part of my patent which contains extracts from Charnock's tables. It is attested by the clerk of the court to be a true copy. I have also sent a true copy of Fitch's patent, to show how much unlike it is to my boats and the one you have copied from me; and I have sent the certificates of two experienced English engineers, who are now engaged in Talman & Ward's manufactory in the Bowery, who state that the links claimed by Mr. Dodd as his invention and an important improvement have been to all Bolton & Watt's engines for fourteen years. When I put these links in my patent, I did not patent them exclusively for all kinds of machinery; nor did I patent the steam-engine or Charnock's tables. I made use of all these parts to express my ideas of a whole combination new in mechanics, producing a new and desired effect, giving them

their powers and proportions indispensable to their present success in constructing steamboats; and these principles those powers and parts which I combined for steamboats, and which never before had been brought together in any steamboat I patented for that purpose and no other, as every artist who invents a new and useful machine must compose it of known parts of other machines. So in patent medicines,— Lee's bilious pills: he did not invent their elements, but combined certain ingredients in certain proportions to make a useful medicine, in which the just proportions are absolutely necessary and part of the invention, as in mechanics the discovery of the proportion of the parts which produce the desired effect make part of the invention.

As you have been heard before the committee and a crowded house in pleading your own cause in your own way, carefully using only such arguments as you hoped would destroy me, I have thus sought the indulgence of a generous public to hear my statement of facts, none of which you can disprove. And now, sir, I leave your merits and mine to the honest and noble feelings of the penetrating gentlemen of this truly great and honorable State. They cannot be mistaken in your view. It is to seize on the property of mind-the fruit of ten years of my ardent studies and labor - and apply it to your own use, thereby destroying forever all confidence in contracts with this State and placing the property of inventors in a position so insecure as to destroy every mental exertion.

FULTON'S LETTERS ON THE FIRST VOYAGE OF THE CLERMONT.

To the Editor of the American Citizen:

Sir, I arrived this afternoon at four o'clock in the steamboat from Albany. As the success of my experiment gives me great hopes that such boats may be rendered of great importance to my country, to prevent erroneous opinions and give some satisfaction to my friends of useful improvements, you will have the goodness to publish the following statement of facts:

I left New York on Monday at one o'clock, and arrived at Clermont, the seat of Chancellor Livingston, at one o'clock on Tuesday: time, twenty-four hours; distance, one hundred and

ten miles. On Wednesday I departed from the Chancellor's at nine in the morning, and arrived at Albany at five in the afternoon distance, forty miles; time, eight hours. The sum is one hundred and fifty miles in thirty-two hours, equal to near five miles an hour.

On Thursday, at nine o'clock in the morning, I left Albany, and arrived at the Chancellor's at six in the evening. I started from thence at seven, and arrived at New York at four in the afternoon time, thirty hours; space run through, one hundred and fifty miles, equal to five miles an hour. Throughout my whole way, both going and returning, the wind was ahead. No advantage could be derived from my sails. The whole has therefore been performed by the power of the steam-engine. I am, sir, your obedient servant,

ROBERT FULTON.

To Joel Barlow:

My steamboat voyage to Albany and back has turned out rather more favorably than I had calculated. The distance from New York to Albany is one hundred and fifty miles. I ran it up in thirty-two hours, and down in thirty. I had a light breeze against me the whole way, both going and coming; and the voyage has been performed wholly by the power of the steam-engine. I overtook many sloops and schooners beating to windward, and parted with them as if they had been at anchor.

The power of propelling boats by steam is now fully proved. The morning I left New York, there were not perhaps thirty persons in the city who believed that the boat would ever move one mile an hour or be of the least utility; and, while we were putting off from the wharf, which was crowded with spectators, I heard a number of sarcastic remarks. This is the way in which ignorant men compliment what they call philosophers and projectors.

Having employed much time, money, and zeal in accomplishing this work, it gives me, as it will you, great pleasure to see it answer my expectations. It will give a cheap and quick conveyance to the merchandise on the Mississippi, Missouri, and other great rivers, which are now laying open their treasures to the enterprise of our countrymen; and, although the prospect of personal emolument has been some inducement to me, yet I feel infinitely more pleasure in reflecting on the

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