|
Robert Fulton
(14 Nov 1765 - 24 Feb 1815)
American inventor.
|
Science Quotes by Robert Fulton (4 quotes)
As the component parts of all new machines may be said to be old[,] it is a nice discriminating judgment, which discovers that a particular arrangement will produce a new and desired effect. ... Therefore, 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.
— Robert Fulton
A Treatise on the Improvement of Canal Navigation (1796), preface, x.
But how to raise a sum in the different States has been my greatest difficulty.
— Robert Fulton
Letter from Robert Fulton from London (5 Feb 1797) to President George Washington, proposing benefits from building canals. In Henry Winram Dickinson, Robert Fulton, Engineer and Artist (1913), 57.
My steamboat voyage to Albany and back, has turned out rather more favorable than I had calculated. The distance from New York to Albany is one hundred and fifty miles; I ran it up in thirty-two hours, and down in thirty. I had a light breeze against me the whole way, both going and coming, and the voyage has been performed wholly by, the power of the steam engine. I overtook many sloops and schooners beating to windward and parted with them as if they had been at anchor. The power of propelling boats by steam is now fully proved.
— Robert Fulton
Letter to Joel Barlow, Philadelphia, from New York (22 Aug 1807), in The Literary Magazine, and American Register for 1807 (1808), Vol. 8, No. 47, 96.
The fear of meeting the opposition of envy, or the illiberality of ignorance is, no doubt, the frequent cause of preventing many ingenious men from ushering opinions into the world which deviate from common practice. Hence for want of energy, the young idea is shackled with timidity and a useful thought is buried in the impenetrable gloom of eternal oblivion.
— Robert Fulton
A Treatise on the Improvement of Canal Navigation (1796), preface, ix.
Quotes by others about Robert Fulton (2)
What sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you excuse me. I have no time to listen to such nonsense.
In Ashton Applewhite, Tripp Evans and Andrew Frothingham, And I Quote (1992), 172, but without definitive source. Webmaster has not found any 19th-century book with such a quotation. Contact webmaster if you can help identify if this is a valid quote or merely a joke.
The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the clown.
In Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science (1980), 34.
See also:
-
14 Nov - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Fulton's birth. -
The First Steamboat - Robert Fulton
-
The Fulton Patents
Booklist for Robert Fulton Steamboats.
At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes--an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense. -- Carl Sagan
