THE CONQUEST OF TIME AND SPACE 



At that very time Benjamin Franklin said this would 

 never be. But twenty years later Fulton's Clermont 

 paddled up the Hudson River from New York to Al- 

 bany and opened the era that saw Fitch's prophecy 

 fulfilled. This was in 1807 — ^ y^^^ that must stand as 

 the most momentous in maritime history. In that year 

 the little Clermont steamed slowly from New York to 

 Albany, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles in 

 thirty-two hours, unaided by sails or oars, and pro- 

 pelled entirely by steam-power. A sail-boat could 

 cover the distance in the same number of hours; a 

 modem torpedo boat in one-sixth the time. Yet no 

 performance of any boat, before or since, had such far- 

 reaching effects upon the progress of the world. 



When Fulton turned his attention from his favorite 

 theme — the invention of a submarine boat — and took 

 up the question of perfecting a boat propelled by steam, 

 he did not find himself the first or the only inventor in 

 the field. For a hundred years, in round numbers, 

 men had been wrestling with the question of applying 

 steam pressure to boat propulsion. All manner of more 

 or less ingenious devices had been conceived, most of 

 them having a germ of success in the principles in- 

 volved, but all of them being failures in actual practice. 



Among the most promising of these first steamboats 

 were those in which the propeller, or the paddle-wheel, 

 was tried; but neither of these methods was looked 

 upon favorably at first. Less promising was one in 

 which the motive power was a jet of water pumped 

 through a submerged tube — a principle that still peri- 

 odically fascinates certain modem inventors. 



[64] 



