196. Fulton makes his first steamboat.--But while Fulton was doing
these things with his diving-boat, he was always thinking of the
paddle-wheel scow he used to fish in when a boy. I turned those
paddle-wheels by a crank, said he, but what is to hinder my putting
a steam engine into such a boat, and making it turn the crank for
me? that would be a steamboat. Such boats had already been tried,
but, for one reason or another, they had not got on very well. Robert
R. Livingston was still in France, and he helped Fulton build his
first steamboat. It was put on a river there; it moved, and that was
about all.
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