The Rumsey Society, of which Benjamin Franklin was president, was formed to aid him, and there ensued a sharp controversy for priority of invention between Rumsey and John Fitch. The latter had, in July, 1786, experimented on the Delaware with a steamer moved by upright paddles, fitted at the gunwales, but his first successful boat was operated in July, 1788. He changed the paddles to the stem of the craft, where they worked nearly as well as a wheel. Fitch is believed to have invented the first double-acting condensing engine, transmitting power by means of cranks, produced in any country. He took his boat to New York and exhibited it on the Collect, where it was finally beached and abandoned to decay.

In 1804, John C. Stevens, of Hoboken, N. J., constructed a steamboat on the Hudson that was driven by a Watts engine, with a tubular boiler of his own invention and a screw propeller. Chancellor Livingston and Nicholas Roosevelt were interested in this undertaking, which was a failure, as the machinery shook the boat to pieces.

It was reserved for Robert Fulton lo make of the steamboat a practical and commercial success. Racked by Chancellor Livingston's money he built in New York, in ISOtJ, a steamer which he named the " Clermont," the title of the Livingston country-seat. She was one hundred and thirty feet in length, eighteen in width, seven in depth, and of one hundred and sixty tons burthen. Her engine was bought from Watt & Boulton. On Friday, August 7, 1807, she started on her first voyage to Albany, and reached there in thirty hours, an average for the one hundred and fifty miles of five miles an hour. In September she began running regularly for the accommodation of the public, making the round trip in seventy-two hours, for which each passenger was charged fourteen dollars.