Robert Fulton was born in 1765 in Little Britain, Pennsylvania. Little Britain was renamed Fulton after his success. He grew up with a talent to tinker with things, and even invented a few things before he was twenty. When he was thirteen, Fulton built paddle wheels and attached them to a fishing boat. This was very successful and made fishing a lot easier for the fisherman whose boat got upgraded. As a young man, he dreamed of becoming a painter. In 1794, he went to France to fulfill his dream. .
While in France, his success as a painter was very limited. He was not very good and the French wasted no time in telling him so. Fulton finally turned back to inventing, patenting things such as a mill for sawing marble, a machine for spinning flax, and many other things. In 1797, he started working on a thing like a submarine, but he called it a plunging boat. He showed it to the French government and they were somewhat intrigued by the deadly looking torpedoes the plunging boat shot. The French, who were at war with the British at the time, told him to destroy a British ship that ran along the French coast. Fulton tried but the torpedo hit the side of the ship, and exploded, causing no damage whatsoever. France cast away the idea. Fulton took the idea to Britain, but after Fulton failed to destroy a French ship, they also vetoed him.
Eventually, he returned to the U.S. and started work on a steamboat. Many people credit Fulton with inventing the steamboat, but he merely put the design into practice. In 1807, he took a steam engine from England, built a hull, and rigged up paddle wheels to the engine, as he had done 29 years earlier with a small fishing boat. He called it the "Clermont" and attempted to take it up the Hudson River. At first it failed, but a few adjustments were made, and it was on its way. It averaged 5 miles per hour, and made the trip in 32 hours. It was extremely successful, and many more boats were built like it.
