Fitch's steamboat testedIn 1787, inventor John Fitch demonstrated his steamboat on the Delaware River to delegates of the Continental Congress. Its top speed was 3 mph. These tests were completed years before Fulton built his steamboat. Early in 1787, the Colombian Magazine described the steam engine design as “similar to the late improved steam engines in Europe,” with a horizontal twelve-inch cylinder. The piston was proposed to give “thirty strokes in a minute; which will give the axle tree about forty revolutions. Each revolution of the axle tree moves twelve oars five and a half feet. As six oars come out of the water, six more enter the water... The oars work perpendicularly and make a stroke similar to the paddle of a canoe.”« |
