Читать книгу Robert Fulton and the Submarine онлайн

16 страница из 48

Most obliged

Robert Fulton

In 1797, Fulton conceived the idea of making a short trip to France and then returning to America. From various letters he appears to have had expectations, or perhaps they were only hopes, that he could find opportunity to apply his canal ideas in his own country. Accordingly, the summer of 1797 finds him in France en route for America. But instead of tarrying for a few weeks as he had in mind, he remained seven fruitful and critical years.

In France he began at once to devote himself, as he had been doing in England, to the development of small canals, republishing in French his “Treatise on Canals” under the title, “Recherches sur les Moyens de Perfectionner les Canaux de Navigation, etc.” It bore date an 7, the French revolutionary equivalent to 1799, and contained not only all the matter of the English edition of 1796, but also new material of particular application to France. In 1798, he was granted a French patent for certain details of canal construction, and in the same year attempted to secure the interest of Napoleon in the utilization of his ideas. The letter in which he makes the attempt was written in French, and a copy made by Fulton is now preserved in the New York Public Library.^[1]