Steam: The Untold Story of America's First Great Invention

n 1790, the first passenger steamboat in America-and the world-plied the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Trenton. Its inventor was not Robert Fulton, but a silversmith named John Fitch, whose reward was constant ridicule and poverty. Considering there was not a single working steam engine in America in the 1780s, this steamboat's development within just five years was nothing short of remarkable. But Fitch faced competition from the start, and he and several other inventors fought a string of bitter battles, legal and otherwise, beginning in 1786. In the end, Fulton-using a mail-order British steam engine-ended up with the credit and the glory nearly two decades later. This book tells the fascinating story behind America's first important venture in technology, the persevering men who made it happen, and how their inventions moved the new nation westward.