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Show WHO ROBERT FULTON WAS. The Hudson-Fulton celebration in. New York recently caused the Catholic Standard and Times to look up Robert Fulton's parentage and some of his accomplishments. We quote: Robert Fulton's father was a native of Kilkenny Kilken-ny Ireland, an engineer. The son inherited his inventive in-ventive and mechanical genius. He" was a many-sided many-sided youth a sort of Irish-blooded Leonardo da Vinci mathematician, painter, inventor, architect, canal builder, engine maker. He was not the first to try the practicability of steam as an aid to river and sea navigation, but he was the first who put a steamboat capable of making a long voyage on the water and to begin a regular system of transportation transporta-tion by means of steam power on an American r0UHe was the first also to show the destructive powers of gunpowder in submarine warfare. He made a torpedo boat, and refused to sell the secret to the British government when he had demonstrated demon-strated its ability to blow up a ship on the water. He could have gained an immense fortune from his invention, but he had a premonition that by selling it to the British he might be a contributory party to the destruction of American independence, and hence he declined the tempting proffer. ' But he stood ready to place the great discovery at his country's service, and did so most effectually during dur-ing the second war with England. The enemy's fleet kept at a respectful distance from the American Amer-ican ports then, for they knew that Fulton's bulldogs bull-dogs were waiting patiently for them under the quiet waters. Fulton offered to let the Irish patriots have the benefit of his invention if they were able to get up another insurrection, as we learn from the memoirs of Thomas Addis Emmet, and volunteered to go to Ireland himself to lay the torpedoes. But there was no opportunity for a long time after his death for a fresh resort to physical force to shake off English thraldom. It was in the field of peace that Fulton's genius found the most beneficent play. His steamboat revolutionized the world of commerce, and so helped on the great work of civilization by uniting peoples peo-ples and countries inimical and estranged, and breaking down foolish bars of racial antipathy. Techincally he was American; really an Irishman, not an Anglo-Saxon. But his genius belongs to the whole wide world. |