page_title: John Fitch (inventor)
section_title: Steam-powered boat
hierarchical_section_title: John Fitch (inventor) / Steam-powered boat
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Modell eines der Versuchsboote von J. Fitch, ausgestellt im Technikmuseum Berlin
context_page_description: John Fitch was an American inventor, clockmaker, entrepreneur and engineer. He was most famous for operating the first steamboat service in the United States. The first boat was 45 feet long it was tested on the Delaware river by Fitch and his design assistant Steven Pagano.
context_section_description: By 1785, Fitch was done with surveying and settled in Warminster, Pennsylvania, where he began working on his ideas for a steam-powered boat. Unable to raise funds from the Continental Congress, he persuaded various state legislatures to award him a 14-year monopoly for steamboat traffic on their inland waterways.  With these monopolies, he was able to secure funding from businessmen and professional citizens in Philadelphia.
  Fitch had seen a drawing of an early British Newcomen atmospheric engine in an encyclopedia, but Newcomen engines were huge structures designed to pump water out of mines. He had somehow heard about the more efficient steam engine developed by James Watt in Scotland in the late 1770s, but there was not a single Watt engine in America at that time, nor would there be for many years (Fulton's exported model in his 1807 steamboat, Clermont, would be one of the first) because Britain would not allow the export of any new technology to its former colony.  As a result, Fitch attempted to design his own version of a steam engine. He moved to Philadelphia and engaged the clockmaker and inventor Henry Voigt to help him build a working model and place it on a boat.
  The first successful trial run of his steamboat Perseverance was made on the Delaware River on August 22, 1787, in the presence of delegates from the Constitutional Convention. It was propelled by a bank of oars on either side of the boat. During the next few years, Fitch and Voigt worked to develop better designs, and in June 1790 launched a 60-foot (18 m) boat powered by a steam engine driving several stern-mounted oars. These oars paddled in a manner similar to the motion of a swimming duck's feet. With this boat, he carried up to 30 paying passengers on numerous round-trip voyages between Philadelphia and Burlington, New Jersey during the summer of 1790. Estimates of miles traveled that summer range from 1,300 to 3,000, and Fitch claimed that the boat often went for 500 miles without mechanical problems. Estimated speeds were of a minimum 6 miles per hour under unfavorable conditions, to a maximum of 7 or 8 miles per hour.
  Fitch was granted a U.S. patent on August 26, 1791, after a battle with James Rumsey, who had also invented a steam-powered boat. The newly created federal Patent Commission did not award the broad monopoly patent that Fitch had asked for, but rather a patent of the modern kind, for the new design of Fitch's steamboat. It also awarded steam-engine-related patents dated that same day to Rumsey, Nathan Read, and John Stevens. The loss of a monopoly due to these same-day patent awards led many of Fitch's investors to leave his company. While his boats were mechanically successful, Fitch no longer had the financial resources to carry on.
  Fitch's idea would be turned profitable two decades later by Robert Fulton. Though Fulton was able to obtain a monopoly in the state of New York because of the powerful influence of his partner Robert Livingston, he was unable to gain a U.S. patent largely because he could not demonstrate the originality of his designs. Also, an original member of Fitch's company, William Thornton, had become head of the newly created Patent Office, and made the application process even more difficult for Fulton. Fitch had also received a patent in 1791 from France, and in 1793, having given up hope of building a steamboat in America, he left for France, where an American investor, Aaron Vail, had promised to help him build a boat there.  But Fitch arrived just as the Reign of Terror was beginning, and his plans had to be abandoned.  He made his way to London to make an attempt there, but that also failed. He returned to the United States in 1794 and made a few more tries to build a steamboat.
  Failing this, he moved to Bardstown, Kentucky, in 1797, where he hoped to sell some of the lands he had acquired there in the early 1780s, and use the proceeds to build a steamboat for use on the Ohio or Mississippi River. He arrived to find settlers occupying his properties, resulting in legal disputes that occupied him un
caption: Model of the "Perseverance," Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin, Germany.
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