HUDSON-FULTON CELEBRATION OF 1909 



3 2 9 



Society, No. 226 West Fifty-seventh Street, and rare manuscripts and 

 books on the same subject may be seen at the College of the City of 

 New York, St. Nicholas Avenue and 138th Street. 



As is the case with all great inventions, steam navigation was not 

 the work of one man alone, although Eobert Fulton was the first to 

 apply it consequently and permanently. Epoch-making inventions 

 have usually been the work of a group of men pursuing the same end, 

 often independently of each other, but the credit and glory of success 

 is reserved for that one of them who possesses the energy and persist- 

 ence requisite for ultimate triumph. Before Fulton built the Clermont, 

 John Fitch had constructed a boat operated and propelled by steam, 

 and John Stevens had already sailed a steamboat, his Phoenix being 

 undoubtedly the first steamboat to sail on the ocean ; but Fulton applied 

 the ideas of Fitch and improved upon them to such an extent that he 

 is rightly regarded as the parent of steam navigation. Aided by the 

 advice of Chancellor Livingston, he secured a sort of monopoly in 

 steamship building and his name will always be remembered among 

 those of the great benefactors of humanity. 



The portrait of Fulton by Benjamin West is justly regarded as one 



vol. t.xxv. — 22. 



