The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-08-29
THE EVOLUTION
 OF NAV|GA T|ON Almost AS Gradual As the EvO-
 ton of Man ACHIEVEMENTS OF FULTON In 1907 He Built and Navigated on the Hudson the First Successful oat-Indebted to Earl
 fer Attempts.
ACHIEVEMENTS OF FULTON

From Alice Crary Sutliffe's "Fulton's In-
 vention of the Steamboat" in the Sep
 tember Century.
 The evolution of navigation was almost as gradual as the evolution of man. To deny the preliminary stages in either case would be equally futile From the moment when primitive eyes witnessed |, the voyage of a sun-warped leaf upon a pool, the object lessons of boating were discernible. Soon the hollow log became the prototype of the first canoe; later in- telligence built larger craft, with skins of slain beasts upheld to catch the pro- polling winds; after centuries of progress, perfected sailing ships moved from con tirental shore to shore. A study of his tory will reveal In the art of navigation, as in every other science, the clearly formulated ideas of successive progress.
 In the year 1907 1t remained for Rob- ert Fulton, an energetic American, to arrive, after years of study and number less tests, at that definite Knowledge of proper proportions which enabled him to build and navigate on the Hudson the first successful steamboat. This happy combination of undaunted perseverance, and achievement upon scene of unri- valed beauty, with a group of historic witnesses, and Fulton's subsequent de- velopments of the art of steam navi- gation, combine to make the occasion worthy of national honor at the close of a century.
 It should be observed that the civilized world awaited the invention. Insseveral countries inceptive attempts to solve the problem were manifest, and these are permanently recorded in history. In America John Fitch, William Henry, James Rumsey and Edward West had experimented with varying degrees of success; in Scotland, as early as 17Sl, Symington and Bell had tried experiment upon the waters of the Forth and Clyde canal, and in the same year, in France, the Abbe Arnal propounded his theories In 1795 Earl Stanhope of England, who became an intimate friend of Robert Full ton, experimented with web-footed pad dle; in 1901 Hunter and Dickinson, his countrymen, attempted a trip up the River Thames with a boat which proved a failure. Robert R. Livingston, who later was associated with Fulton as part ner in the enterprise of the Clermont, had tried his hand at the venture. as had also Nicholas J. Roosevelt, who subsequently, QS09) was employed by Livingston and Fulton to study the possibilities of navi- gation by steam upon the Mississippi and other western rivers. To this already long, though incomplete, list of sometime claimants for the honorable title of in- ventor may be added the names of Will liam Longstreet, Samuel Mercy and John Stevens. Truly with Robert Fulton the psychological moment" of demonstra- ton had arrived
 But earlier than any of these essays toward the new art should be noted an superintendent John Allen, M D., who, in 1730, mentioned a method of propelling a vessel by steam. He was a scientific Englishman whose fondness for experl- ment led him to publish a paper entitled Navigation in Calm" The propulsion of the becalmed sailing ship could be ef- fected, he averred, "by the propulsion of