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Show i SAYS FITCH, NOT FULTON, INVENTED STEAM ENGINE (By International News Service) COLUMBUS. Ohio No. Robert Fulton Ful-ton didn't invent the steam engine. Despite the popular impression crediting cred-iting Fulton with this invention, William Wil-liam C. Mills, curator at tho Ohio Archaaeological and Historical society's soci-ety's museum, on the Ohio state university uni-versity campus here, says that tho steam engine was invented by Johu Fitch. A steam engine made by Fitch was operated successfulll in a steamboat twenty-one years before Fulton's Clermont Cler-mont plied the Hudson river, according accord-ing to Mills. The original working model of Fulton's boat, invented In 17S0, is now in the custody of Curator Mills. Recently it was given to the Ohio Archaeological society by A. N. Whiting, oX this city, great grandson of Fitch. Tho engine, machinists say, contains the principles which have been reproduced repro-duced in all steamboats. It is three feet long with solid wheels and upright up-right cylinder of steam conveyances. Fitch's first boat was successfully tested July 26, 17SG. Hfs second boat, the Perseverance, launched two ye?r later, carried passengers between Philadelphia and Burlington. The company, whose organization was promoted by Patrick Henry, then governor gov-ernor of Virginia, and -which provided the money for building the boat, failed, fail-ed, howeder, and the boat went to pieces. Fitch became a bankrupt and a heartbroken man. oo |