Steamboat
a boat or vessel propelled by steam acting either on paddles by Denis Papin, who navigated it safely down the Fulda as long ago as 1707.
Unfortunately this pioneer craft was destroyed by jealous sailors, and even the very memory of it was lost for threequarters of a century. In 1775 Perrier, another Frenchman, built an experimental steam vessel at Paris. Eight years later, in 1783, Jouffroy took up the idea that had been evolved by Papin and Perrier and built a steamboat which did good service for some time on the Saone.
The first American to attempt to apply steam to navigation was John Fitch, a Connecticut mechanic, who made his in- STEAMBOAT OF 1736 itial experiments in the year 1785. To what extent Fitch was indebted to the three illustrious French inventors named above we are not informed, but that his models were original there is not the least doubt. In the first he employed a large pipe kettle for generating the steam, the motive power being side paddles working after the fashion of oars on a common rowboat. In the second Fitch craft the same mode of propulsion was adopted with the exception that the paddles were made to imitate a revolving wheel and were fixed to the sternclearly foreshadowing the present sternwheeler. STEAMBOAT This last mentioned boat was the first American steam vessel that can be pronounced a success. It made its first trip to Burlington in July, 1788. But, after STEAM HAMMER The oldest and simplest consists of a bent tube partially filled with mercury, one end of which springs from the boiler, so that the steam rising in the WATER LINE