Jouffroy now thought of starting a company to run boats on the new system, and applied to the Government for the necessary permission. The question was submitted to the Academy of Sciences, who appointed a Commission to inquire into the matter, but among the members of the Commission was the unsuccessful Périer, whose opposition resulted in the Academy concluding that the experiments at Lyons were not decisive. The Marquis had not the means to continue building steamboats and, profoundly discouraged, he abandoned the rôle of inventor. He had already been subjected to much ridicule, and it was generally agreed that he must be mad to think of “making fire and water agree”; he was even nicknamed “Pump Jouffroy.” He witnessed the experiments of Fulton in France, but did not think of claiming the merit of his discovery until 1816, when he issued a publication entitled “Steamboats.” The same year he took out a patent, formed a company, and on August 20 launched a steamboat at Bercy, but the venture did not come up to the expectations of the shareholders, and this was his last effort. Jouffroy died of cholera at the Hôpital des Invalides in 1832. Arago, the historian, says that his claims to be the first inventor of the steamboat have been established, and, according to Larousse’s “Dictionnaire universel du XIX^e siècle,” Fulton himself openly acknowledged them in the United States law courts. CHAPTER II AMERICAN PIONEERS IN STEAM NAVIGATION Towards the end of the eighteenth century American inventors turned their attention to the problem of navigation by steam, and to one of them, Robert Fulton, the credit of having invented the steamboat has usually been given. Livingston’s “Historical Account of the Application of Steam for the Propelling of Boats” has been accepted as an authority on the subject, but as he was Fulton’s friend and backer, and Fulton married into the Livingston family, there is reason to question the absolute accuracy of the circumstantial story told by this most eloquent special pleader, though there is some excuse for his partiality. A little investigation makes it apparent that Fulton was not the first American to design a successful steamboat, nor even the first to make the running of steamboats a satisfactory speculation.