STEAM. 221 



when lie met Chancellor Livingston, then Ambas- 

 sador of the United States in Paris, who was then 

 studying the question of steam navigation in the 

 company of an Englishman named Nisbett and the 

 French engineer Brunei, who afterwards made the 

 Thames Tunnel. Livingston undertook to find the 

 necessary funds for establishing steam navigation in 

 America, and Fulton, after making a study of the 

 previous essays, decided to adopt the paddle-wheel. 

 Experiments made on the Seine (August 9th, 1803), 

 before a committee of the Academic des Sciences, 

 proved a complete success, but Napoleon refused to 

 let the question come before the Academy, for, as 

 England at that period alone had large workshops for 

 the construction of the machinery, she would have 

 benefited by the invention long before France would 

 be in a position to utilise it. Moreover, Fulton 

 frequently stated that it was his intention to establish 

 steam navigation upon the broad American rivers, 

 and not on what he called the rivulets of France. A 

 steam-engine ordered by Livingston and Fulton, 

 unknown to Bolton and Watt, in 1804, was only 

 ready in October, 1806, upon which date Fulton 

 sailed for New York, and launched his boat on the 

 East Eiver. When his success in the States was 

 placed beyond all question, the priority of his claim 

 was disputed, and the worry of the lawsuit un- 

 doubtedly hastened his death, which occurred when 

 he was only fifty, on February 24th, 1815. The 



