If you had been working very hard, and suddenly received an order from an influential man to do a responsible piece of work for him, you would be very happy over it. Such a pleasure came to Robert Fulton in 1791, when Lord Courtenay, the Earl of Devon, invited the young artist to visit his famous country estate, Powderham Castle, during the vacation month of June, to paint his lordship’s portrait.

The castle in Devonshire, which is one of England’s most beautiful counties, was about two hundred miles from London. There the Earl lived in princely grandeur, and admitted to his court only persons of equal rank; all others were entertained by his steward, a gentleman of birth and education.

This visit proved a turning-point in Fulton’s life. With high hope he made the journey by stage-coach, reveling in the springtime glory of the wooded country-side. The study of the art treasures in the castle, and his appreciation of them, led to a later tour of other famous country-estates in England, and he became familiar with the great masterpieces of painting which hung in the spacious private galleries of the nobility, for Lord Courtenay, pleased with Fulton’s fulfilment of the intrusted commission, introduced him to all his friends.

It was a novel and valuable experience for the young man. Devonshire is noted for its scenic beauty and healthful climate: so the trip not only gave the hard-worked student a beneficial change of air and scene, but also put money in his purse, and quieted the fears of possible failure which had occasionally disturbed his peace of mind.

Once again Fulton himself shall tell us, through this quaint and delightful letter to his mother, of the pleasant change which had befallen him:

You will notice that Fulton says that Lord Courtenay had introduced him to all his friends. Among them were two men of rank and high intelligence, the Duke of Bridgewater and Earl Stanhope, whose influence at this time seems partly responsible for a sudden change in Fulton’s line of thought.

The Duke of Bridgewater owned vast coal mines. He sold their product in the growing town of Manchester where coal was in demand for the many factories; but every load had to be carried upon the backs of pack horses and the transportation was slow and difficult. The duke had been trying to find an easier way and, by the advice of a clever workman, he had opened a canal through his land, and shipped the coal on barges. This plan worked well and wealth began to pour into the duke’s coffers. This led to his desire to dig canals throughout England so that produce from farms might easily be sold. The idea was not new, for such waterways had already been used in Europe and in Asia; but the duke’s way of building them was somewhat novel, and one of the great difficulties he encountered was that of overcoming the many different water levels.

When we recall the old-time methods,—stage-coaches lumbering their slow way along post-roads; sailing vessels tacking their roundabout paths across the oceans; and harvests wilting on the ground because farmers had no way to send them to the cities where the hungry would gladly have bought them;—when we remember all this we can quickly realize why the thoughtful men of the world were beginning to try to plan new and better ways of transportation.

Robert Fulton could look back in thought to his boyhood days in Lancaster, and recall the story of the enrichment of certain farmlands by a clever Swiss settler, who had watered a whole range of hitherto barren land, by simply cutting trenches along the side of a hill, wherein water was conducted, from upper springs, to the thirsty lands below. The digging of channels to form watercourses was not new; it had proved its value.

Inspired by the need of the Duke of Bridgewater, and impressed by the money earned by his simple device, Robert Fulton set himself to study out a better way to build canals.

In fact, about this time he appears to have been pondering on many practical methods to simplify work. He visited the stone and marble quarries in Devonshire and found that the digging and raising of the heavy products was extremely hard work. His first invention was a mill for sawing marble and stone, which proved so successful that when Fulton returned to London in the autumn he sent his model to the Society of Arts, Commerce and Manufactures and received a silver medal and the thanks of the society.

Two talents were now striving for expression in Fulton’s active mind, art and science. One or the other had to have his full devotion; and about this time he seems to have laid aside his brushes, with all their charm and the rewards which he was just beginning to realize, and to have deliberately taken up the practical problems of invention.

This change was not because he did not love art, for throughout the remainder of his life he continued, from time to time, to paint portraits; he was ever a devoted patron and friend of art, but there was not time for both professions, and that of the inventor now made the stronger appeal.

The everyday needs were those which won Fulton’s earliest attention. He made a machine for spinning flax, perhaps in thought of his patient mother at home, working at her old-time spinning-wheel; and he next produced a machine for making rope. It stood in a room forty feet square and could be worked by one man, twisting cordage of any size and winding rope yarn on spools.

In these inventions Fulton saw an opportunity to help mankind to better and easier methods of work, and also a way of securing a competence. His vision was wide; humanity was one family, and the round world provided a vast field for labor. It is not probable that he could have gained this view of life if he had tarried in quiet Lancaster.

He stayed in Devonshire nearly two years, although he returned to London for occasional visits. From Devonshire he went to Birmingham, a town of industrial importance, where he studied the method of the Duke of Bridgewater for building canals from that point to the seaports of England. From that time on his mind was concerned with plans for better means of transport. The years 1792 to 1796 were filled with new activities, new plans, new friends, new places of residence. He visited France, he toured Devonshire, he went to Birmingham and Manchester, the most important manufacturing centers in England where machinery of the highest type then known was in use.

By 1794 Fulton had invented an inclined plane for use in canals, by means of which boats could be lifted by upright hoists or rails to different levels of water; his hope was to avoid the complicated system of locks. He patented it in London, and described himself “Robert Fulton, late of the City of Exeter, but now of the City of London, Gentleman,” which indicates that he had laid aside his former titles, “miniature painter,” and “painter.”

During his stay in Manchester Fulton met young Robert Owen, the manager of Drinkwater’s Mill, the first mill to use steam power. Owen was a fellow of fine intelligence and the two young men found many interests in common.

With other well-chosen comrades they formed a club which met on winter evenings to debate all sorts of subjects,—chemistry, science and religion. They called themselves “philosophers”; and so interesting were their meetings that they were very popular and well attended.

One of the members was John Dalton, who later became a noted chemist, and another was the fine poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, then a student at Cambridge, so he could only come during vacation times.

In 1794 Fulton and Owen formed a partnership for Inclined Planes and Canal Excavations. Owen promised to advance the money and Fulton “to apply his whole time and exertions to the said business.” But the following spring, after a disappointment through the postponement of digging a canal at Gloucester, the two men dissolved the partnership by mutual consent. An unbroken friendship continued between them, and in old age Owen referred with pleasure to the fact that he had been able to advance Fulton in a career which later was of such benefit to the world.

In 1796 Fulton wrote to Owen that he had made an improvement in the “tanning business” and that it promised to pay well. This goes to show how many plans he carried in his fertile brain, but at this time he was chiefly concerned in canal work.

During this year he produced his first publication, “A Treatise on the Improvement of Canal Navigation,” and signed it “R. Fulton, Civil Engineer.” Much time was spent over this production for he illustrated it with seventeen plates and sent it broadcast to the distinguished men of the world. In several instances he wrote personal letters to accompany the book, by which he hoped to awaken wide interest.

He sent one letter to Governor Mifflin of Pennsylvania, another to Napoleon Bonaparte, and a third to George Washington, then President of the United States. This letter is interesting as showing how great a system of canal extension Fulton had in mind:

The letter, hopefully sent by a friendly hand, was duly received and politely acknowledged by our first president, who, on the 14th of December, expressed his thanks and confessed “the subject is interesting and I dare presume is well treated but as the Book came to me in the midst of busy preparatory scenes for Congress I have not had leisure yet to give it the perusal which the importance of such work would merit. I shall do it with pleasure, I am persuaded, when I have.”

President Washington’s letter must have seemed somewhat disappointing, after waiting five months, but optimism was Fulton’s strong point and he thrived on even a crumb of encouragement. Accordingly, the day after its receipt, we find that Fulton followed up the matter by another letter; it shows that the young American had, as a base for calculation, only the carriage rates from Lancaster to Philadelphia, yet with how sublime a faith he prophesies the extension of a canal from Philadelphia to Lake Erie,—the first prediction of the great Erie Canal! It was a brave flight of fancy but was actually realized during the early part of the next century,—Fulton having been the earliest to foresee its possibility.

He trusts that “His Excellency will soon have time to peruse his pamphlet on small canals ‘in tranquil retirement from the busy operations of a Public life.’” He confessed that the greatest difficulty in the plan was to devise a method to raise the vast sum of money for the canals. At first thought, he considered them “national works,” to be built at the expense of the government, but finally concludes that an incorporated company of subscribers should be formed who would pledge themselves to apply one half, or any agreed part, of their profits to extension as it would then be to their interest to promote the work and to guard the earnings.

Then Fulton includes other states in the calculation and predicts “a creative system which would fill the whole country and in less than a century bring water-carriage within the easy cartage of every acre of the American States, conveying the surplus labours of one hundred millions of men, and bind the whole in bonds of social intercourse.”

Fulton wrote also to the great Napoleon and presented his plan with considerable originality. He said that “fear of envy or the criticism of ignorance is frequently the cause of preventing ingenious men from making important discoveries;” and adds, “the mechanic should sit down among levers, screws, wedges, wheels, etc. like a poet among the letters of the alphabet, considering them as the exhibition of his thoughts, in which a new arrangement transmits a new Idea to the world.” He reminded Napoleon that “men of the least genius are the first to condemn and the last to praise a new idea, because they have not the sense to grasp the produce of genius when they see it.”

It was rather a daring deed for a young engineer to venture to offer to Washington and Napoleon, world-famous men of their day, a new idea to benefit their respective countries. He also tried to influence public opinion in England by the publication in the London Morning Star of some essays on Canal Navigation.

It is to be hoped that these literary productions brought some money to Fulton’s pocket, for he was so interested in his canal project that he had not touched his painting for two years. He was on a fearless quest for new methods to solve world-wide problems. He dared to be original. Many a man who dared less has failed to bring valuable aid to humanity.

And so Fulton changed his career from art to invention, a turn in the tide of his thought which brought much good to the world. But he retained his love for beauty and his hand never lost its cunning; and later, in hours of leisure, he painted portraits as strong and expressive as in his younger days.