John Fitch (inventor)

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John Fitch (January 21, 1743–July 2, 1798) was an American inventor, clockmaker, and metalsmith who built the first recorded steam powered ship in the United States.

Fitch was born on a farm in South Windsor, Connecticut. He received little formal schooling and eventually apprenticed himself to a clockmaker. Following his apprenticeship, he opened an unsuccessful brass foundry in East Windsor, Connecticut and then a brass and silversmith business in Trenton, New Jersey which succeeded for a time but was wiped out in the American Revolution.

He served briefly during the Revolution and then left the army to manage a gun factory in Trenton. Fitch also made considerable money selling beer and tobacco to the Continental Army. In 1780 he began work as a surveyor in Kentucky where he recorded a land claim of 1600 acres for himself. Later, surveying in the Northwest Territory he was captured by Indians and turned over to the British who eventually released him.

By 1785 Fitch was done with surveying and settled in Bucks County, Pennsylvania where he began working on his ideas for a steam-powered ship. 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 a group of prominent citizens in Philadelphia.

Fitch had seen drawings of British steam engines but was required to build his own because of the expense and difficulty of purchasing one. He built several successful models and then with the help of Henry Voight, a watchmaker, he constructed a 45-foot steamboat.

The first successful trial run of his steamboat 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. The following year Fitch launched a 60-foot boat powered by a steam paddle-wheel. With this boat he carried up to thirty passengers on numerous round-trip voyages between Philadelphia and Burlington, New Jersey.

During this time, Fitch became embroiled in a dispute with James Rumsey over who could rightfully claim precedence for development of a steamship in America.

Fitch was granted a patent on August 26, 1791, after a battle with James Rumsey, who had created a similar invention. Unfortunately the newly-created Patent Commission did not award the broad monopoly patent that Fitch had asked for, but a patent of the modern kind, for the new design of Fitch's steamboat. It also awarded patents to Rumsey and John Stevens for their steamboat designs, and the loss of a monopoly caused many of Fitch's investors to leave his company, which was a cause of his business failing.

His Delaware river steamboat of 1790 ran much faster than the one of 1787, and if it had not had to compete with cheap wagon and coach traffic it might have been successful.

Fitch's idea would be turned profitable by Robert Fulton, decades later. 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 US Patent largely because one of Fitch's company, William Thornton, had become a clerk of the Patent Office and bitterly opposed him. Fitch also received a patent the same year from France, and is more widely credited than Fulton in Europe.

On August 26, 1791, John Fitch was granted a United States patent for the steamboat. Four years earlier, on August 22, 1787, John Fitch demonstrated the first successful steamboat, launching a forty-five-foot craft on the Delaware River in the presence of delegates from the Constitutional Convention. He went on to build a larger steamboat which carried passengers and freight between Philadelphia and Burlington, New Jersey. Fitch was granted his patent after a battle with James Rumsey over claims to the invention. Both men invented similar inventions. John Fitch constructed four different steamboats between 1785 and 1796 that successfully plied rivers and lakes and demonstrated, in part, the feasibility of using steam for water locomotion. His models utilized various combinations of propulsive force, including ranked paddles (patterned after Indian war canoes), paddle wheels, and screw propellers. While his boats were mechanically successful, Fitch failed to pay sufficient attention to construction and operating costs and was unable to justify the economic benefits of steam navigation. Robert Fulton (1765-1815) built his first boat after Fitch's death, and it was Fulton who became known as the "father of steam navigation."

Fitch was granted his patent after a battle with James Rumsey over claims to the invention. In a 1787 letter to Thomas Johnson, George Washington discussed Fitch's and Rumsey's claims from his own perspective.

A memorial to Fitch stands in the court square of Bardstown, Kentucky, complete with a replica of his first steamboat.

Fitch's journal and memoirs were published many years later as The Autobiography of John Fitch. Though told with the biases of a bitter and disappointed man, they are a vivid and moving picture of his times and unhappy life.

[edit] References

• Prager, Frank , editor (1976) The Autobiography of John Fitch Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society
• Watson, John F. (1850), Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, King and Baird
• Wescott, Thompson (1857), The life of John Fitch, the inventor of the steamboat, Philadelphia: J. B. Lipponcott & Company.
• "John Fitch." Dictionary of American Biography. 1928-1936.
• "John Fitch." Webster's American Biographies. G&C Merriam Co. 1975.