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Robert Fulton

Fulton’s Steamboat, The Black Ball Line & The Erie Canal

January 17, 2022 by James S. Kaplan 4 Comments

England, a packet ship of the Black Ball LineFor thousands of years prior to the early 1800s maritime transportation was dependent on sailing ships. In the first few decades of the 19th century however, entrepreneurs in New York helped revolutionize the industry so that one hundred years later sailing ships were an anachronism that hardly existed, except for show.

In the latter part of the 1700s the development of the Boulton & Watt steam engine in England made it theoretically possible to power a boat. Before 1800 a number of inventors, including New Yorkers such as Nicholas Roosevelt, John Fitch, Robert R. Livingston, John Stevens III and others, experimented with boats that used such steam engines. Before Robert Fulton made his first run in the North River steamboat (later renamed Clermont) in 1807 more than a dozen steamboats had been constructed in the United States with varying degrees of success.   There were difficulties in making such craft commercially viable. [Read more…] about Fulton’s Steamboat, The Black Ball Line & The Erie Canal

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Albany, Buffalo, DeWitt Clinton, Economic History, Erie Canal, Hudson River, Manhattan, Maritime History, New York City, New York Harbor, Political History, Robert Fulton, Robert Livingston, Steamboating, Transportation History, Wall Street, Wall Street History Series

Early Years Of Steamboating On The Hudson

August 11, 2015 by Peter Hess 6 Comments

800px-Robert_R_Livingston,_attributed_to_Gilbert_Stuart_(1755-1828)In 1798, Robert R. Livingston, Jr. (1746-1813) requested and obtained a monopoly from the New York State Legislature granting him the exclusive right to operate passenger steamboats on the Hudson River.

The Livingston family was very wealthy and owned the large estate, Clermont, just south of Albany. They ran an iron foundry and machine shop for many years where they had installed a steam engine to power the equipment. [Read more…] about Early Years Of Steamboating On The Hudson

Filed Under: History, Capital-Saratoga Tagged With: Albany, Hudson River, Industrial History, Maritime History, New York City, Robert Fulton, Robert Livingston, Steamboating, Transportation History

Robert Fulton Lecture At Adirondack Museum

February 12, 2015 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

AdirondackMuseum-CabinFeverSundays_Feb22_SteamboatFulton(OldForge)In the fourth installment of the Adirondack Museum’s Cabin Fever Sundays series, New York Council for the Humanities speaker Robert Arnold III will explore the legacy of Robert Fulton, the creator of the first commercially successful steamboat.

Arnold will address the ways Fulton’s steamboat helped to catalyze the expansion of steam power into the energy source that propelled America’s Industrial Revolution.  Fulton was a talented artist and inventor who also devised canal locks used in Britain, and the first workable submarine (for Napoleon Bonaparte). [Read more…] about Robert Fulton Lecture At Adirondack Museum

Filed Under: History, New Exhibits Tagged With: Adirondack Museum, Adirondacks, Fulton County, Hudson River, Industrial History, Robert Fulton, Transportation

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