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Show Frenchman First to Us Steam to Propel Boat? A deposition signed by two notaries nota-ries of Lyons, France, a letter from the American Inventor, Robert Fulton, Ful-ton, and numerous other papers appear ap-pear to prove conclusively that the Inventor of the first steamboat was not the American artist-inventor, Fulton, but a French royalist, the Marquis Claude Dorothee de Jouff-roy Jouff-roy d'Abbans, who died 100 years ago, July 18, 1S32. While Robert Fulton was still a young painter and only eighteen, the second steamboat invented by Jouff-roy Jouff-roy d'Abbans successfuly mounted the current from Lyons up the Sa-one Sa-one river to the Ile-Barbe, amidst the acclamation of the people. Jouffroy, called after his principal family name, has an avenue in Paris named for him, but little credit seems to have been given him for his invention until a French writer, Jacques Christland, took up his cause in a newspaper. Later, Jouffroy's engine builder, Perler, collaborated with the younger young-er Fulton In installing Watts' engines en-gines on steamboats, one of the replicas of which probably was that which navigated the Hudson river and gave Robert Fulton the credit for being the first and foremost inventor in-ventor of the steamboat. Fulton, who spent much time in Paris, had written a letter to the French patent office, called Les Arts-et-Metiers, disclaiming his part as tSe first inventor of the steamboat. |