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T Is Easy to Fall Into the Habit of Thinking That the Foundil1g Fathers Brought

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T Is Easy to Fall Into the Habit of Thinking That the Foundil1g Fathers Brought Downloaded from http://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/memagazineselect/article-pdf/131/04/44/6412110/me-2009-apr6.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 t is easy to fall into the habit of thinking two men who conceived what is now the steam­ that the Foundil1g Fathers brought about boat. The work described here occurred a quarter the American R:evol1!ltion and then faded of a ~entury before Rob ~ rt Fulton demonstrated the into some sort of oblivion. On reflectl.on, Clermbnt, the boat that led to his being rega.~ded as' howeNer,' we realize that all of them were the inventor. human be~ngs faced with the need to earn . As in the case of Newco men, Watt, and the steam a, livelihood ev€n after. the glory days, engine, the man who gets most of the credit for Benjamin Fra:n.klin returned -from his post as an invention is typically not the innovator, but the Ambas·samor to France and opened a printing shop. one who makes the idea pay. The real innovators of ;:]i:n:(])mas Jefferson took time off from his meticulous steam propulsion were John Fitch and James Rum­ a,r2hitectural dr~fting to become Secretary of State. sey. They began meaningful experiments amund Gebrge Washington managed a plafltation and, in 1786. Fulton's successful demonstration did not a78~, became president of a company that sought to come until 1807. Fitch and Rumsey are usually dis­ make ~he Po to mac River navigable. missed with a brief mention when the evolution of DiffeF€nt as their taients may have been, alt of the steamboat is discussed. these men prne to be involved at the earliest stage Both of these men were outstanding, but in very of steam navigation. They were all tied together not different ways. Rumsey was a mechanical genius of GB.{Y by supporting the movement for American the intuitive school. He had an innovative approaGh i:llGiep(mcience, but also by having dealings with the to solving mechanical problems. Among oth~r things, he did seminal work on the application of impulse had a water wheel between its pontoons caused the boat turbines to mill wheels. to move against the current. He accomplished this by Fitch was a colorful Frontier character whose autobi­ having the water wheel drive a reciprocating pair ofaxial ography reads like a book by James Fenimore Cooper carriages that had poles reaching to the river bottom. as rewritten by Leonardo daVinci. He seemed fated This worked, but it was not at all practical. to suffer misfortunes, and they eventually resulted in Having a good engineer's grasp of the fact that a straight his suicide. line is the shortest route between two points, Rumsey Downloaded from http://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/memagazineselect/article-pdf/131/04/44/6412110/me-2009-apr6.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 The two men came into direct con­ flict in 1788 because the patent laws in the new U nited States were inad­ equate to give either of them the pro­ tection that they felt that their inno- vations deserved. Their steamboat stories can be traced to 1784, shortly after the Revolution that effectively ended at Yorktown in 1781. Rumsey had the advantage from the very beginning. He was a suc­ cessful architect and innovator who had already conceived a fanciful and ultimately unsuccessful means of pro­ pelling a boat against river current .... A 1788 sketch by Rumsey shows his propulsion scheme: a Newcomen engine piston connects to the smaller piston of a water-jet pump. when George Washington appointed him superintendent of the Potomac ("Patowmack") River Project. turned to connecting a hydraulic pump piston directly Meanwhile, Fitch was recovering from a career that to the piston of a Newcomen engine. He retained the had already involved having had his foundry destroyed traditional walking beam linkage only to power acces­ by the British and going into frontier surveying, dur­ sories like water pumps. ing which he successfully laid claim to large tracts of In this assembly, he produced an entirely respectable land and was captured by Indians. During his captiv­ example ofjet propulsion. The pump took in water from ity, Fitch lived on more or less friendly terms with the near the keel and then ejected it at the stern of the boat­ Indians, who handed him over to the British to use in an an arrangement that was functionally similar to the exchange of prisoners of war. Fitch later established "putt-putt" boats that were popular with children a metal working and clock repair shop, using before the birth of the Consumer Product Safety tools that he made out of scrap barrel hoops Commission. In them, water flashed to steam with his bare hands. in a boiler that was connected to the outside by a thin tube below the water line. The Evolutions of Steam momentum of the ejected water caused it Steamboat . development was a logical to leave the boiler with a partial vacuum, evolution of Newcomen's engine, which this siphoned water into the boiler, and the had been reduced to practice around 1710. cycle was repeated. It was aided by a flex­ Fitch . anc~ Rumsey both used some vari­ ible diaphragm. Rumsey demonstrated the ant of the Newcomen engine, although jet concept successfully at Shepherdstown, each started with a different concept. Fitch W. Va., in 1787. was initially interested in steam carriages, The pulsating jet concept was introduced although he soon turned to a steam rowboat. At to America by Benjamin Franklin. While the same time, Rumsey was abandoning his idea Ambassador to France, Franklin had heard of a water wheel propelled pole boat and turning to learned speculation on the possibility of propel- an ingenious application of the Newcomen engine. ling a boat with a jet of water. He reported on this Rumsey had demonstrated to Washington his working to the American Philosophical Society in-1785 after his model of something that sounds at first like a perpetual return, and even described a manually pumped jet boat. motion machine. The flow of water past a catamaran that (The American Philosophical Society is still a respected Apri l 2009 I mechanical engineering 45 Downloaded from http://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/memagazineselect/article-pdf/131/04/44/6412110/me-2009-apr6.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 misled workers into exploring a number of dead ends . .. A working replica of Rumsey's firstboat was built by the Rumseyan Society. Here, members of the society take it for a demonstration on the While Rumsey was experimenting with jet boats, Fitch Hudson River. had gone through several evolutions aimed at getting the power from a Newcomen engine into propulsive effort. factor in American science, as well as being a repository He had not been successful with a primitiv~. propeller and for historical publications and artifacts dating back to had gone through a number of paddle arrangements. the revolution.) The initial one, which attempted to duplicate the Unfortunately, Franklin's report had the effect of set­ reciprocating action of a gang of rowers, and which must ting back development by several years because he argued have awakened unhappy memories ofIndian war canoes, convincingly that paddle wheels would not work. This was not successful, although it worked after a fashion. It involved a complex linkage of the kind that today delights instructors in Kinematics 101. Fitch had better fortune with an array of paddles at the stern of a boat broadside to the direction of trav­ el. By moving those fore-and-aft, a usable thrust was developed. Presumably, they were feathered on the backstroke, although the drawings do not make this .... Fitch's oar-propelled steamboat was recreated in a detailed drawing by Edwin Tunis in Oars, Sails and Steam. The 1952 book has been reissued by Johns Hopkins University press. ~- 46 mechanicaL engineering I April 2009 clear. A boat using this arrangement was actually used which would start in 1789, and an American consul at in 1788 to carry passengers between Philadelphia and l'Orient who, while holding his papers for safekeeping, Burlington, NJ., while Rumsey was promoting loaned them to Robert Fulton, further contributeq his jet boat in demonstrations on the Po to mac to his downfall. at Shepherdstown. Fitch finally died in 1798, a tragic figure, by Later, Rumsey began a patent war by overdosing himself with opium pills after a mendaciously claiming that his boat of prolonged but unsuccessful effort to drink 1784 was really a steamboat. The patent himself to death with alcohol that he pur­ laws in the United States were just being chased by bartering away his land holdings. developed at that time, and there was The Rumseian Society that was formed in Downloaded from http://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/memagazineselect/article-pdf/131/04/44/6412110/me-2009-apr6.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 enough ambiguity to allow both men to the 1780s to raise funding, was re established present what they thought to be legiti­ in 1906 and exists today in Shepherdstciwn, mate claims. Both inventors later tried to where a replica of Rumsey's boat has been obtain patents in England. constructed. A bridge across the Potomac is The controversy between Rumsey and named for him. John Fitch is commemorated Fitch went so far as to involve Thomas Jef­ by a painting that hangs in the U.S. Capitol ferson, who was an inventor in his own right. and by the John Fitch Way, a highway that runs As Secretary of State, Jefferson was a member of between the Delaware River and the state Capitol the board that issued patents.
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