That great American, Benjamin Franklin, whose genius touched such a diversity of subjects, saw, as early as 1775, that paddle-wheels were inefficient machines, and called attention to the fact, suggesting that an engine be devised to draw a column of water in at the bow, to project it forcibly astern in order to give the ship headway. This method was tried but before much success had been attained, all engines being of such low power, the screw propeller had been perfected and the water-jet system was dropped, although in 1782 James Rumsey built a boat of this type on the Potomac. In France a steamboat built by the Marquis de Jouffroy is said to have been operated in 1783. This boat was 150 feet long and ran with some degree of success for about a year and a half. Jouffroy has sometimes been given credit for the invention of the steamboat. In 1788 a small vessel of strange design was driven at four or five miles an hour by William Symington in Scotland. This boat was built at the expense of a Scotch banker named Patrick Miller. Two years before this John Fitch, a New Englander, built a fairly successful steamboat that was propelled by steam-driven oars. Symington’s experiments were continued and another boat that made seven miles an hour was running in 1789. Still more successful was another of Symington’s boats, the _Charlotte Dundas_, when, in 1802, she towed two loaded vessels, totalling nearly one hundred and fifty tons at three and one-half miles an hour for a score of miles in the Forth and Clyde Canal. The project was abandoned, however, because of the effect of the agitated water on the banks of the canal. The _Dundas_ was, of course, driven by a paddle-wheel. Symington continued his efforts but was unfortunately handicapped financially, and when Lord Bridgewater, his next backer, died, he withdrew from the field, reduced to poverty. [Illustration: THE _CHARLOTTE DUNDAS_ _Before the_ Clermont _was built, this boat had operated successfully on the Forth and Clyde Canal in Scotland. The objection to her was that she stirred the water up so that she injured the banks of the canal._ ] But all of these were merely preparatory to the first steamboat that is to be accepted as a thoroughly practical affair. In 1807, after several years of travel in Europe where he inspected all the steam engines of which he could learn, and where he experimented with a steamboat of his own design on the Seine, Robert Fulton built the _Clermont_ in New York. Her engine, or at least the major part of it, was built in England and shipped to New York where it was installed in the first definitely successful steamboat ever built. The _Clermont_ was 133 feet long and 18 feet wide, and made the run from New York to Albany, a distance of about one hundred and fifty miles, in thirty-two hours.