FULTON

the American engineer, was born in 1765. He began life as an artist, but on a visit to England made the acquaintance of James Watt and the Duke of Bridge water, and his attention was turned at once to invention. In 1797 he exhibited in Paris a boat propelled by steam on the model of the Charlotte Dundas which he had seen plying on the Forth and Clyde Canal;, and, on his return to America, he built a steamboat which plied on the Hudson River at the rate of five miles an hour in 1807. In Paris he had invented several torpedoes, and in 1814 he built in America the first war-steamer.