Steam Navigation, 305 



was started on the Seine ; and then the Marquis com- 

 plained loudly of Fulton's boat as being a piracy of his 

 invention. On this occasion, Monsieur Royou (in the 

 "Journal des Debats," March 19, 18 16), in reply to the 

 Marquis, says, " It is not concerning an invention, but the 

 means of applying a power already known. Fulton never 

 pretended to be an inventor, in regard to steamboats, in 

 any other sense. The application of steam to navigation 

 had been thought of by all artists ; but the means of 

 executing it were wanting, and Fulton furnished them." 



* Dr. Franklin, in 1785, writes to Monsieur Alphonse Le- 

 roy thus : — " Several projectors have at different times pro- 

 posed to give motion to boats, and even to ships, by paddles 

 placed on the circumference of wheels on each side of the 

 vessel ; but this method has been found so ineffectual, as 

 to discourage a continuance of the practice." ^ 



'The plan proposed by Daniel Bernouilli, in 1738,^ was 

 by driving a column of water out at the stern of the vessel ; 

 which plan has been many times suggested, and several 

 times tried by other ingenious men, but without success. 

 It seems strange that, to so eminent a mathematician as 

 Bernouilli, the radical defects of this plan should not have 

 occurred. As the water issues from the mouth of the 

 tube, it escapes in the radial lines of a semisphere. The 

 resisting forces will be directly as the distance of each of 

 the radii from the surface, and their propelling power will 

 be equal to the force with which the water is driven from 

 the orifice, only in the direct line of the tube's centre, and 

 it will diminish with the angular deviation of the radii from 

 that line, until it becomes nil at right angles ; wherefore 



* Life of Dr. Franklin, vol. iii. p. 528. London, 1818. 

 2 In the Society's vol. this is put 1783 by inversion. D. Bernouilli died 

 in 1782. 



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