A Brief History
On August 26, 1791, American John Fitch patented the steamboat, 16 years before Robert Fulton first sailed his Clermont on the Hudson River. While Fulton’s steamboat, actually named North River Steamboat, was the first commercially successful steamboat, you may not have heard of Fitch as the first to actually build a working steamboat.
Digging Deeper
The nature of inventions and who we are taught are the inventors of those gadgets leads to some mistaken impressions as to who invented certain things. Inventions are often being worked on by different people in unrelated projects, and initial versions of inventions are not always the definitive archetype of that object.
Several inventors were developing the electric light bulb, and Edison’s version was not the first, though it certainly became the first commercially successful version. Telephones, telegraphs, motor cars and televisions are other examples of inventions being made simultaneously by various inventors.
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: What incorrect information were you taught in school?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Boyd, Thomas. Poor John Fitch: Inventor Of The Steamboat. Kessinger Publishing, 2010.
Shagena, Jack. Who Really Invented the Steamboat?: Fulton’s Clermont Coup. Humanity Books, 2004.
