FULTON

a city of New York, in Oswego co. It is on the New York Central, the Lack a wanna, and the New York, Ontario and Western railroads, and on the Oswego Canal and Oswego River. Its industries are important and include the manufacture of chocolate, flour, woolen goods, paper, motor boats, etc. It has a public library and other public buildings. Pop. 1920, 13,043. American engineer and inventor, b. at Little Britain, Pa. of Irish Parents in humble circumstances, his education was confined to learning how to read and write, but he studied at home. Apprenticed to a Philadelphia jeweler he also took to painting miniature portrait s and landscapes and sold enough to buy a small farm for his widowed mother. At 22 he went to London and studied under Benjamin West, ally giving up art for mechanics, having won the interest of the Duke of Bridge water and Earl Stanhope. Taking up the study of canals in 1794 the government gave him a patent for an inclined plane that was to take the place of canal locks. In 1796 he went to Paris and remained seven years. He invente d the ‘Nautilu s’ a submarine, that carried torpedoes for warfare, and then studied steam navigation. In 1803 a small boat propelied with steam. was tried with succe on the Seine. In this venture and others he was helped by the United States Minister, Robert Livings ton. He went to New York in 1803, and in 1807 the steam boat ‘Clermont’ was launche d and made a succe ful trip to Albany at a speed of 5 miles an hour. Fulton and Livings ton were granted a Monopoly for steamboats by the legislature, and the boats became numerous in various rivers of the country. Fulton was not the first in steam navigation, but the first to make it a succe , Already Rumsey and Fitch in) America in, 1786-87 had tried it, and many attempts had been made to harne steam for boats in Europe. Fulton in 1814 planned a steam warship with guns, but the war of 1812 stopped experiments, and it was used for a receiving ship. He worked on the ‘Nautilus’ submarine until his death. In 1909 the centenary of the ‘Clermont’ and Tercentenary of the discovery of the Hudson, was celebrated on that historic river. See Knox Fulton and Steam Navigation, and Sutcliffe, Robert Fulton and the Clermont, 1910.