The First Steamers 25 



man had probably never heard of what 

 Cugnot did just before Murdoch's model 

 locomotive was set running. 



Thus, soon after Cugnot had made 

 his experiments with his steam carriage 

 (two were built, and one of them is now 

 preserved in a Paris museum), the 

 Marquis de Jouffroy placed a steam- 

 driven craft on the Saone in 1783 . Here we 

 have two paddle-wheels employed driven 

 by a single horizontal steam cylinder. 



Beyond drawing the attention of many 

 inventors to the possible use of steam 

 for small craft no one imagined at that 

 period that large vessels would ever be 

 steam-driven nothing further seems to 

 have been done in France in this direc- 

 tion. Having shown the way, it seemed 

 as if France was content to let others 

 take up the running. 



I want here to stress the fact that the 

 paddle-wheel as a means of boat propul- 

 sion had been fully understood for hun- 

 dreds of years. There was, however, one 



