Description:

Fulton Robert


Engineer and Steamboat Inventor Robert Fulton Designs Flintlock Mechanism for Firearms or Floating Mines

 

ROBERT FULTON, Manuscript Document, Ca. 1809-1813, Diagram of flint-lock mechanism. 2 pp., 9.5" x 11.875". Some edge loss, not affecting text or diagrams; “New Jersey Historical Society” ownership stamp. Also includes two early twentieth-century postcards: the first features a color image of the “Steamer ‘Clermont’ New York to Albany and Return”, and the second features an engraving of “The First Steam Boat” in Scotland, which made its first voyage in 1788.

 

This item includes three diagrams—one in ink and two in pencil—of a flintlock firing mechanism. Above the ink drawing on one side is the notation in Fulton’s hand, “September 24 wrote to Mr Eustace to have 12 made at harpers ferry; sent a lock and drawing.” On the verso beneath the third drawing is the note “This pattern to be followed.”

 

William Eustis (1753-1825) was Secretary of War from 1809 to 1813, under President James Madison. The United States established its second federal armory at Harpers Ferry, (West) Virginia, in the 1790s, and it began the mass production of military arms in 1802. With this drawing, Fulton hoped to gain Secretary Eustis’s support in having the federal armory build a dozen of these flintlock firing mechanisms. This design may have been for a musket, but it also may have been for naval mines of the type Fulton had designed in Great Britain for use against the French. After he returned to the United States, he proposed their use to defend American ports against British ships in the War of 1812.

 

Robert Fulton (1765-1815) was born in Pennsylvania. As a teenager, he lived in Philadelphia for six years, where he painted portraits and landscapes, and drew houses and machinery. After purchasing a farm for his family near Pittsburgh and settling them on it, he traveled to Europe in 1786 and lived there for the next twenty years. In England, he studied painting and experimented with mechanical inventions. In the 1790s he began working on steam power for boats and other aspects of canal engineering. In 1797, he went to Paris, where he studied French and German, and mathematics and chemistry. While there, he designed the first working muscle-powered submarine, Nautilus, and experimented with torpedoes. He also met U.S. Ambassador to France Robert R. Livingston, and the two collaborated on building a steamboat. Initial tests were positive, but the boat sank in August 1803. In 1804, Fulton returned to Great Britain and worked on naval weapons to defend against a French invasion. Two years later, he returned to the United States. In 1807, Fulton and Livingston built the first commercially successful steamboat, North River Steamboat (later known as Clermont) to operate on the Hudson River between New York City and Albany. In 1808, Fulton married Harriet Livingston (1786-1824), and they had four children. From 1811 until his death, Fulton served as a member of the Erie Canal Commission. In 1812, a new steamboat he designed, New Orleans, traveled from Pittsburgh down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to its namesake city, changing the trade and transportation network for the middle of the continent.

 

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

 

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