nvented. Before that time men had done most of
the work of the world with their hands, and you may imagine that the
work went on very slowly. Since that time most of the world's work has
been done with the aid of the steam-engine, and one man can do as much
as many men could do in the past. You have seen the wheels rolling and
heard the machines rattling and the hammers clanging in our great
factories and workshops. And I fancy most of you know that back of all
these is the fire under the boilers and the steam in the engine, the
mighty magician which sets all these wheels and machines at work and
changes raw material into so many things of use and beauty.

Now let us come back to our American inventors. I have spoken about the
steam engine because it was with this that most of them worked. They
thought that if horses could drag a wagon over the ground and the wind
could drive a vessel through the water, steam might do the same thing,
and they set themselves to see in what way a carriage or a boat could be
moved by a steam engine.

Very likely you have all heard about Robert Fulton and his steamboat,
but you may not know that steamboats were running on American waters
years before that of Fulton was built. Why, as long ago as 1768, before
the Revolutionary War, Oliver Evans, one of our first inventors, had
made a little boat which was moved by steam and paddle-wheels. Years
afterwards he made a large engine for a boat at New Orleans. It was put
in the boat, but there came a dry season and low water, so that the boat
could not be used, and the owners took the engine out and set it to work
on a sawmill. It did so well there that it was never put back in the
boat; so that steamboat never had a chance.

Oliver Evans was the first man to make a steamboat, but there were
others who thought they could move a boat by steam. Some of these were
in Europe and some in America. Down in Virginia was an inventor named
Rumsey who moved a boat at the speed of four miles an hour. In this boat
jets of water were pumped through the stern and forced the boat along.
In Philadelphia was another man named John Fitch, who was the first man
to make a successful steamboat. His boat was moved with paddles like an
Indian canoe. It was put on the Delaware River, between Philadelphia and
Trenton in 1790, and ran for several months as a passenger boat, at the
speed of seven or eight miles an hour. Poor John Fitch! He was
unfortunate and in the end he