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Some years ago a site visitor submitted photos of these
pages to me. If anybody knows where these pages were originally printed, in what publication, please let me know. Allegheny County's pg 100 (cont. from ??) Beats me. I don't have those pages - Dave the incident just quoted of "de Garays" experiment possibly came in some way, to the Marquis' notice, and that he proceeded, after the manner of all inventors', to improve upon it. There is, also, a fact In history as to an early steamboat that might justify the idea that both Fitch and Fulton were not entirely original in their idea of a boat propelled by machinery moved by steam, presuming even that "de Garay's exhibition in 1543 had not accidentally came to their knowledge. A treatise was printed in London in 1737, describing a machine invented by Jonathan Hulls, for carrying vessels against wind and tide, for which George II granted a patent for fourteen years. A drawing is prefixed to the treatise showing a boat with chimney smoking, a pair of wheels rigged over each side of the stern. From the stem of the boat a tow line passes to the foremast of a two decker, which the boat thus tows. This is evidently the first idea of a steam tow boat. As this was a published treatise, and there was a patent on record, public information must have circulated of a steamboat before the experiments of Fitch or Fulton or Stevens or Livingston, and while similarity of ideas in inventions, are not infrequent, absolute originality is difficult to establish. James Ramsey, before mentioned, October, 1774, obtained from the legislature of Virginia an Act guaranteeing him the exclusive use of his invention in navigating the waters of that State for ten years. Ramsey went to England, and through many discouragements struggled on until he had constructed a boat of one hundred tons and so far completed his machinery as to indicate a day for public exhibition. He died suddenly before the day, while beginning the delivery of a lecture at Liverpool, England. The boat was set in motion on the Thames in 1793 and a fitting tribute paid to his memory by the Congress of the United States on February 9, 1839, when it unanimously voted his son a gold medal commemorative of his father's agency in giving the world the benefit of the steamboat. In 1780 the Marquis de Jouffrey worked a steamboat 140 feet long on the Seine, In 1785 both Ramsey and Fitch had exhibited models to Gen'1 Washington, and on March 15, 1785, Washington, in a letter to Hugh Williamson, certifies that his doubts are satisfied, after witnessing Ramsey's experiment. Fitch made many efforts to have his invention tried. He applied to Congress and was refused, just as was nearly the fate of Morse with his telegraph. He offered his invention to the Spanish government, for the purpose of navigating the Mississippi, without better success; but at length obtained the funds for the building of a boat, and in 1788 his vessel was launched on the Delaware. Fitch used oars worked in frames. After many experiments, Fitch abandoned his invention, having satisfied himself of its practicability, being embarrassed with debt. He died in 1799, at Bardstown, Kentucky, and was buried near the Ohio. In 1787, after Fitch's experiment, a Mr. Symington succeeded in propelling a steamboat on the Clyde in Scotland. In 1797 John Stevens, of Hoboken, began his experiments, and succeeded in propelling boats at the rate of five or six miles an hour. In 1797 Chancellor Livingston built a boat on the Hudson, and applied to (Cont. on pg. 102)
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