Chapter IV
The artist as engineer
Robert Fulton was an artist in the best sense of that term; and, like all
great painters or sculptors, like all men of genius who accomplish anything
by actual doing, he was as naturally and truly a mechanic. The artistic
sense has little value for purposes of accomplishment without manual and
tactual dexterity and sensitive nerves and muscles in exact accord with
the operations of the thought-faculty. Every successful artist, like every
surgeon, investigating chemist, physicist, naturalist of whatever type,
depending on manipulative operations for his triumphs, must be naturally
a mechanic, with all the mechanic's intuitions largely developed. He must
be a constructor as well as a thinker, and must be able to do, as well as
to imagine beautiful things. All this was in Fulton, and in such degree
that he turned his mind with the greatest facility from the creations of
the artist to the constructions of the engineer and the mechanic. He found
it as easy to take up the drawing instruments of the engineer as the pencil
of the painter; as easy to devise new forms of road, canal, ship, or machine
as new and lovely pictures of landscape, or to depict human features in
all their wonderful modes of expression, and to illustrate all their marvellous
shades of character. The successful artist was even more snccessfal as engineer.
The genius of the engineer and the originality of the inventor, which has
been seen in the boy of fourteen, developed with his growth, and without
interruption, into his mature years. The sketches made for the gunmaker
of his native town were but the prototypes of the drawings of the greater
works of the engineer and of the mechanic. The invention of the sky-rocket
was the antecedent of the invention of a submarine engine-of-war; the little
paddle-boat on the Conastoga was the symbol of the later steamboat on the
Seine and on the Hudson; and the boy inventor was the parent of the inan
as engineer. But the genius which had been, in youth, guided and given direction
by the whims of the child, in later years was made the servant of the sage;
and the grander plans of the statesman, devised with a view to the amelioration
of the trials of humanity, were promoted effectively by the application
of the same genius to their accomplishment. The glory of the inventor is
the greater that it came of the grander thought of the humanitarian.
Fulton's work as engineer appears to have been both extensive and successful.
His attention seems to have been called at an early period in his professional
career to the extension and improvement of canals. The floods of 1795 in
Great Britain, where he was then residing, destroyed much property, and
seriously injured portions of the Shrewsbury Canal, especially in the neighbourhood
of Long, where it was carried over the Tern on an aqueduct of some magnitude.
Fulton at once set about the study of better methods of construction, and
devised many ingenious forms of apparatus and machinery for use in canal
construction and operation. He proposed, in 1796, a cast-iron aqueduct,
of which he submitted complete plans and working drawings to a committee
of the Board of Agriculture, in March of that year. He proposed the use
of castings which, as he said, could be "cast in open sand," and
erected without other than the simplest and most inexpensive kind of staging,
instead of the elaborate centring necessitated by construction of stone
arches, - a detail of the older construction which often cost more time
and more thought in planning, and proved hardly less costly in building,
than the main structure itself after its completion. He showed that his
plan compelled the making of but few patterns, and those of easy and cheap
construction; and that the difficulties of securing a water-tight lining
so great in stone works of this sort, were, with iron, insignificant. In
case of a leak occurring later, it would be easily and quickly detected,
and as readily and certainly staunched; while in stone it often was not
observed until much damage had been done; and its repair was sometimes a
matter of great difficulty, delay, and expense.
One of these aqueducts of cast-iron was afterward erected, on the plan of
Fulton, over the Dee, at Pontcylytee, twenty miles from Chester, composed
of eighteen spans of fifty-two feet each, and supported on pillars, the
tallest of which, in the middle of the valley, was one hundred and twenty-six
feet high. The total length of the structure was about three hundred and
twenty-nine yards, its width twenty feet, and its depth six feet. The tow-path
was secured- on one side, bracketed to the body of the aqueduct, and rendered
safe by means of a strong iron rail.
The same principles were adopted in the preparation of plans for bridges
of various kinds, and for all purposes; and plans, detail drawings, and
models were exhibited to the Board of Agriculture at about this time, for
canals, railways, - then already in existence, though before the days of
steam locomotion and of the substitution of the steam-horse for animal power,
- and for highways. Several of these bridges were erected on the line of
the Surrey Iron Railway, including one at Wandsworth. Bridges were designed
by Fulton for carrying the roads across deep and wide valleys on inclined
gradients; and in such cases, often, he pro-posed to haul them over by means
of endless ropes, instead of sending the horses over with them on tow-paths
attached to the bridge, or forming part of it. Water-power or other efficient
motor was to be employed where convenient. The modern and now usual system
of discharging from the railway into barges or vessels by dumping the load
from the cars or wagons into a slide leading down to the water-side from
the higher level of the road, was one of the plans here introduced. Special
provisions were made for the passing of roads, water- courses, and other
lines of rail, and the whole formed a complete and consistent scheme. Fulton's
biographers state that he always made the most perfect and detailed plans,
the neatest of drawings, and usually very accurate models, before proceeding
with his proposals or laying them before capitalists or public officials.
His computations of costs were equally exact, detailed, and well planned,
giving the expense of details of construction, foot by foot, all dimensions,
the loads to be carried for a single horse, the speed, the profits, and
the estimated revenue.
One of Fulton's most interesting and novel, if not his most daring of innovations,
was that in which he proposed to take his boats out of the canal and trails-port
them overland at certain parts of the route, to avoid the first cost of
construction of a canal in a difficult country. These "inclined planes"
were actually built, and were found practicable; and illustrations of this
plan have been in use for many years in the United States, on the line of
the Morris and Essex Canal and elsewhere, while the great scheme of Captain
Edes, of a trans-isthmian railway, uniting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans,
was a development of the same idea on a grander scale. This invention was
patented by Fulton in England, in May, 1794. It was proposed that the boats
should be either taken upon cradles of suitable form and size or into caissons
in which they could float, and the whole mass then drawn Out of water on
wheels, and up the inclined planes to the higher level, or lowered from
the upper to the lower level, as might be required, by horse-power. Counterbalances
were adopted to make the total load a minimum, and every device then known
was applied for reducing friction and resistances. Water-power, where available,
was to be substituted for horse-power, and brakes were employed to control
the load when lowering it. It was proposed that in this manner advantage
should be taken of the opportunities occasionally offering to utilize broad
streams, or even considerable lengths of rivers, in place of the costly
construction of canals, by sending the boats down on the one side and taking
them up on the other, or by running for a distance along the thread of the
stream, then resuming the course of the canal, transferring from the one
to the other by means of inclined planes. The boats were so designed that
they could be easily hauled by horse-power, and yet so light that the transfer
on the inclined planes should not, even where quite steep, become a serious
task. In other cases, he arranged for drawing water from the upper level
and sending it down into the lower portion of the canal, utilizing its weight
in the passage by employing it in the raising of the boats. In some cases
he used centrifugal fans or blowers as regulators of speed.
These plans were, many of them at least, described in a treatise "On
the Improvement of Canal Navigation," published in London, in 1796,
in 4to size, and illustrated by many neatly-made plates. Several forms of
boat for his special purposes are there shown by Fulton, and each adapted
to its peculiar purpose, as for rapid or for slow speeds; for marketing
or for heavy freighting; for mounting on wheels and transportation overland.
He used an elevator for perpendicular lifts, and described all its details
of construction, including a counterbalance, which relieved the hoist from
unnecessary strains. This subject occupied the attention of the great engineer
throughout the remainder of his life; and later, even while in the midst
of the most engrossing labours on the more immediately promising inventions,
and while working upon his scheme of steam-navigation, Fulton was able to
find an occasional opportunity to give a little leisure to the promotion
of canal construction abroad and at home. His treatise on the subject, published
in both French and English, called the attention of Mr. Gallatin, later
Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, to his work, and he was
invited by that gentleman to present his views in detail, for use in a Report
to Congress relating to internal improvements.
In his report to the Secretary of the Interior, Fulton exhibits his statesmanlike
quality of mind, and some of his most impressive thoughts. He quotes Hume,
who says: "The government of a wise people would be little more than
a system of civil police; for the best interest of man is industry and a
free exchange of the produce of labour for the things that - he may require,"
and goes on to ask "what stronger bonds of union can be invented than
those which enable each individual to transport the produce of his industry
twelve hundred miles for sixty cents the hundred weight?" He refers
to the case of England and Seotland, once enemies, now bound together "by
habit, by turnpike roads, by canals, and by reciprocal interests;"
"and when the United States are bound together by canals, by cheap
and easy access to a market in all directions, by a sense of mutual interests
arising from mutual intercourse and mingled commerce, it will be no more
possible to split them into independent and separate governments, each lining
its own frontiers with fortifications and troops, to shackle their own exports
and imports to and from the neighbouring States, than it is now possible
for the government of England to divide and form again into seven kingdoms."
And speaking - of his ideas and their origin, he says: "It is now eleven
years since I have had this plan in contemplation for the good of my country;"
and "it contemplates a time when canals shall pass through every vale,
winding around each hill, and bind the whole country together in bonds of
social intercourse."
On his return to his native country in 1807, Fulton addressed letters to
the Government on this subject, and again in 1810 wrote to the legislature
of New York on the same subject, acting later as a commissioner to investigate
the practicability of securing intercommunication in this manner between
the waters of the great lakes and the Hudson. As late as 1814 he was still
urging this project, which finally resulted in the construction of the Erie
Canal, - a system of public improvements which became ultimately a source
of enormous wealth to the country, and of advantage to the State through
which it passed.
In a letter to President Madison in 1810 he wrote:
"Canals bending around the hills would irrigate the grounds
beneath and convert them into luxuriant pasturage. They would bind a hundred
millions of people in one inseparable, compact body, alike in habits, in
language, and in interest, - one homogeneous brotherhood, - the most invulnerable,
powerful, and respectable on earth." "Will you not search into
the most hidden recesses of science," he asks, to find a means "to
direct the genius and resources of the country to useful improvements, to
the ciences, to the arts, education, the amendment of the public mind and
morals?" "In such pursuits lie real honour and the nation's glory;"
"such are the labours of enlightened republicans, - of those who labour
for the public good."