Armed with this knowledge, with all the experience of Rumsey and Fitch, and with the data from his own trials, Fulton brought to a successful solution the problem of steam propulsion on a commercial scale. It has been remarked that there was no element in the _Clermont_ or her successors so original in conception that it would entitle Fulton to be regarded as the inventor of steam navigation. Nor did he himself claim to be such. He was successful in fitting together the elements, the inventions of others. Science is measurement, and Fulton applied his data and measured with great insight, adapting his elements in the right manner and proportion to form an efficient whole. “He was the first to treat the elementary factors in steamship design--dimensions, form, horse-power, speed, etc.--in a scientific spirit; to him belongs the credit of having coupled the boat and engine as a working unit.” From Fitch he had learned the economy of size, and the advantages of enlarging the scale of operations; from Beaufoy, the importance of a fair underwater form, with a sharp bow and stern. From Symington, who generously took him for a trip in the _Charlotte Dundas_, he could not fail to have gleaned much practical advice and information; it is remarkable, in this connection, that, after a sight of Symington’s horizontal cylinder with its simple connecting-rod drive to the stern wheel, he should have adhered to the vertical cylinder and the bell-crank or beam for the transmission of the force: an initial divergence which was perpetuated, and which became the hall-mark distinguishing American from English practice for some years to come. Most of his knowledge he gained by his activities in England, and many writers have contested a claim--which so far as is known was never made by him--to the invention of the steamship. His achievements were well defined and legitimately executed, and the remarkable insight and initiative which he displayed in adapting the labours of others to serve his own utilitarian ends cannot, surely, deserve the opprobrium cast on them by some of the nineteenth-century writers. Prometheus, it is said, stole fire from heaven. Fulton bought his in the open market; obtaining his engine in Soho and his boiler in Smithfield he transported them across the Atlantic, and in 1807 produced the _Clermont_.