JACKSON: Brooks, _Century Book of Famous Americans_, 162-172; Blaisdell and Ball, _Hero Stories from American History_, 185-198; Hart, _How Our Grandfathers Lived_, 284-291; Barton, _Four American Patriots_, 133-192; Frost, _Old Hickory_. THE MEN WHO MADE THE NATION GREAT BY THEIR INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES ROBERT FULTON, THE INVENTOR OF THE STEAMBOAT [Sidenote: =How boats were driven=] =128. The Invention of the Steamboat.= Once there were no steam engines to drive boats. On sea and river they were driven by wind, and on canals they were pulled along by horses. [Sidenote: =Inventors before Fulton=] James Rumsey on the Potomac, John Fitch on the Delaware, and William Longstreet on the Savannah had each invented and tried some kind of steamboat, before Robert Fulton. Fulton was born of Irish parents, in New Britain, Pennsylvania, in 1765. At the age of three he lost his father. Young Fulton had a great taste for drawing, painting, and inventing. He went to Philadelphia, then the largest city in the Union, when he was twenty, and engaged in painting and drawing. His first savings were given to his widowed mother to make her comfortable. [Sidenote: =Studied under Benjamin West=] Fulton finally decided to be an artist, and went to England to make his home with Benjamin West, a great painter who once lived at Philadelphia. [Illustration: ROBERT FULTON _After the painting by Benjamin West_] [Sidenote: =Influenced to become an engineer=] There he became acquainted with the Duke of Bridgewater, who influenced him to become a civil engineer. Fulton now met James Watt, who had greatly improved the steam engine. At one time the young man aided Watt in building an engine. [Sidenote: =Meets Livingston in France=] Fulton next went to France, where he became interested in plans for inventing diving boats, torpedoes, and steamboats. Here he met Robert R. Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, then United States Minister to France. Livingston took a deep interest in his experiments in driving boats by steam, and furnished him the means to make them. [Sidenote: =Fulton's trial boats=] Fulton made a "model" boat, which he left in France. Shortly afterward, he built a boat twenty-six feet long and eight feet wide. In this vessel he put a steam engine. The trial trips proved beyond a doubt that steamboats could be made. [Sidenote: =Twenty years' rights=] Livingston believed in Fulton and his steamboat. When he returned to New York, Livingston obtained from the legislature the right to navigate the waters of the state by steam for twenty years. The one condition was that the boat should go against the current of the Hudson at the rate of four miles an hour. [Sidenote: =Gets engine in England=] [Sidenote: =The "Clermont"=]