When, a little later, Livingston went to France and became associated with Fulton as the financier of his enterprises, it is probable that the knowledge the former had gained of Morey’s work and Roosevelt’s experiments, and the latter of Fitch’s designs, proved extremely useful to both of them. Nicholas J. Roosevelt had attracted some attention by building a small wooden boat across which was an axle projecting over the sides, and carrying paddles, the contrivance being made to revolve by a light cord wound round the middle of the machine and attached to hickory and whalebone springs. In 1798 he recommended to Livingston a vertical wheel, and the Chancellor replied, “Vertical wheels are out of the question.” As late as 1802 Fulton favoured chains and floats, and it was not until after Livingston had communicated Roosevelt’s plan to him that they applied vertical wheels on Roosevelt’s system to their boat on the Seine. About this time also Livingston was engaged with John Stevens, his brother-in-law, and Nicholas J. Roosevelt on the construction of a steamboat to be used on the Hudson, the New York State Legislature having granted the necessary monopoly. The State required that the boat should attain a speed of three miles an hour, but this was not achieved. Livingston was appointed Minister to France in 1801, and was thus cut off from his two partners and brought into communication with Fulton. Another version is that the boat made three miles an hour, and that the State stipulated for four miles an hour. Robert Fulton, asserted to be an Irishman by descent, was born in Pennsylvania in 1765. When a boy he had witnessed the experiments made on the Delaware by John Fitch, but the problems of steam navigation were only a few of those which occupied his versatile genius. He came to England in 1786, and in 1794 invented a marble-sawing machine, a flax-spinning machine, a machine for ropemaking and a mechanical dredger. In 1795 he published a treatise on canal navigation in which he suggested a number of improvements in lock construction. In 1797 he went to France and was for some time occupied in designing and experimenting with submarine boats. He suggested to the French Government that his submarine would be useful in destroying the British Fleet. The Directory would have nothing to do with his plans, but when Napoleon became First Consul a Commission was appointed to investigate and report upon them. Beyond agitating the British Government for some time, however, while he experimented with torpedoes designed to destroy their fleet, and trying unsuccessfully to sell his invention to the French Government, nothing was accomplished. He came over to England in 1804 prepared to sell his invention to the British Government. From one point of view Fulton appears as the inventor of a horrible engine of destruction, ready to dispose of it to any country which would buy at a remunerative price.