Soon after this he went to Paris, and built a submarine, the _Nautilus_. This boat was tried in Brest Harbor in 1801, before a commission appointed by Napoleon Bonaparte, and Fulton succeeded in blowing up a small vessel anchored there for that purpose. Two years later, at Paris, he was also successful in propelling a boat by steam power. Fulton returned to America, and in partnership with Robert Livingston constructed the first American steamboat, the _Clermont_. This was launched in the spring of 1807, and its success caused a great sensation. The principle of propelling boats by steam was now proved. The _Clermont_ was soon established as a regular passenger boat between New York and Albany. Fulton built the _Demologos_, or _Fulton the First_, for the United States government during the years 1814 and 1815. This was the first steam battleship ever constructed. In February, 1815, the inventor caught cold from exposure and rapidly became worse. On February 24 he died, mourned by everyone who had known the man and his achievements. PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 29, SERIAL No. 29 [Illustration: ELIAS HOWE] _GREAT AMERICAN INVENTORS_ _Elias Howe_ THREE It is a remarkable fact that some of the greatest and most useful inventions have been bitterly opposed by the very persons whom they were designed to help. The bowmen of olden time resented the introduction of guns; the stage coach lines tried in every way to block the building of railways; and Elias Howe, the inventor of one of the greatest labor saving devices in the world, the sewing machine, was ridiculed, discouraged, and denounced as an enemy of poor sewing women, the ones whose toil he was seeking to lighten. They imagined that with the introduction of the sewing machine their occupation would be taken away. Elias Howe was born at Spencer, Massachusetts, on July 9, 1819, one of a family of eight children. His father was a farmer and miller, and Elias’ early years were spent in the mill. At the same time he managed to pick up a smattering of education. He went to Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1835, to work in a cotton mill. Two years later he obtained a place in a Cambridge machine shop, in which his cousin, Nathaniel P. Banks, afterward governor of Massachusetts, was also employed. Howe married at the age of twenty-one and moved to Boston. It was there that the first germs of his great idea became implanted in his brain. To increase the family income his wife did sewing at night. As Howe watched her slowly and laboriously stitching a seam, his inventive mind sought and sought for some way to decrease her toil. He had a natural bent for mechanics, and it was not long before he had constructed the first crude sewing machine.