ROBERT FULTON
A Biography

First Edition 1985 FRANKLIN WATTS, INC. 387 PARK AVENUE SOUTH NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10016 ISBN: 0531097560

Robert Fulton (1765—1815) was a renaissance man. This first full-scale biography of the American inventor, entrepreneur, and political visionary reveals the stunning diversity of his unique genius.

World famous for his steamboats, Fulton originally hoped to be an artist. He achieved some recognition for his portraits in Philadelphia. Then, ambitious to excel, he journeyed to London where he studied art for seven years. Fulton never gave up painting for pleasure, but when he was twenty-seven years old, he shifted his focus to engineering.

While in England, Fulton designed a system of lockless canals. Paris was the site of his first steamboat demonstrations. Even more important to him— because he dreamed they would eradicate war—were the submarine boat and bombs he built for the French and then sold to the British.

Fulton returned to America in 1806, believing his inventions would transform his country. Within a year he had established the first steamboat service in the world and gained President Jefferson’s support for his submarine weapons. These successes, compounded of pride and opportunism as well as bold imagination, provoked bitter controversy. Nevertheless, they catapulted the United States into the forefront of the technological age.

Fulton’s relentless pursuit of fame and fortune is played against the background of the American and French Revolutions, the Napoleonic Wars, the Jefferson administration and the War of 1812. The extraordinary array of artists, scientists, diplomats, businessmen and intriguing women, who were Fulton’s intimates, is epic in scope.

With penetrating historical sweep and a wealth of personal detail, Philip’s landmark biography presents a compelling and sometimes shocking in-depth portrait of the mercurial Robert Fulton. Based on contemporary letters, diaries, paintings and drawings, most of which have never been published before, Robert Eu/ton is as dramatic and surprising as it is true.

 ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cynthia Owen Philip is a freelance writer who lives in New York City and Rhinecliff, New York. She is the author of "Imprisoned in America: Prison Communications 1776 through Attica."

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