Robert Fulton went to England in 1786 at the age of twenty-one to study art with Benjamin West, the most famous American artist of the day. After several reasonably successful years with West in London, Fulton went to Devon to paint a series of commissioned portraits, and that marked the beginning of a substantial transformation for Fulton. In six years of traveling through the English midlands, he converted from artist to engineer, a title he claimed in his first publication, A Treatise on the Improvement of Canal Navigation (1796). The purpose of this research project is to investigate Fulton's conversion, to understand why he gave up a promising career in art to devote the rest of his life to engineering and invention, culminating in his widespread recognition as the inventor of the steamboat.
Fulton has attracted many biographies since his death in 1815, but most fall victim to the nationalism that so often engulfs the stories of "heroic inventors." Americans have been most assiduous and hagiographic in telling Fulton's story, but they have done most of their research in the United States and much less in Europe, where Fulton had spent almost two decades. Europeans have generally neglected Fulton in favor of their own claimants for the title of inventor of the steamboat. The working hypothesis behind this research project is that Fulton's experience in the English midlands in the mid-1790s was the formative period in his professional and personal development, the time when he embraced a view of technology that was flourishing in the British Industrial Revolution and also when his political and ideological views of the world began to develop. These factors and others shaped the rest of Fulton's remarkable career, and only research in local records and artifacts can fully capture what he might have experienced. The results can shed light on the continuing relationship between art and engineering and the motivations that spur creative people to embrace engineering careers.
The results of this research will eventually be published as part of a full length biography of Fulton. The biography should have broad appeal well beyond historians of science; it should be of substantial interest to art historians, inventors, engineers, architects, and others.
This project examined a turning point in the life and career of Robert Fulton (1765-1815), the American painter and engineer widely credited with inventing the steamboat. Fulton left his native Pennsylvania in 1786 to study painting in London with Benjamin West. After more than six years, and some signs of artistic success, Fulton suddenly turned his back on painting and became an engineer and inventor. This project studies that turning point in 1793, trying to understand why Fulton changed careers and how he was able to so quickly declare himself an engineer. Research in the midlands of England, where Fulton traveled in search of experience and opportunity in his early engineering career, combined with research in London and the United States in other archives that shed light on his motivation, suggest a powerful combination of forces at work on Fulton. Among the most important considerations are the strong similarities between painting and engineering; the poor prospects in either England or America at the time for a painter of middling talent; the many opportunities and low barriers to entry in the nascent field of engineering; issues of sex, class, and ideology that shaped Fulton’s response to patrons of art and engineering; and the fact that Fulton could get a start in engineering based mostly on his promise and potential as a bright, creative mechanic and dreamer, as opposed to the rigorous judgment of completed work that preceded acceptance in the world of art. This project has implications beyond the worlds of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art and engineering. The investigation attempts to understand the motives of an engineer at a critical juncture in his career. Why do people choose engineering and how do contextual issues of prestige, remuneration, barriers to entry, and social prejudice bear on the ways in which they see themselves and see the field of engineering? How could an autodidact like Fulton teach himself the science and technology he needed to be successful in his new career when he had very little formal education? Would such a conversion be possible today? While Fulton eventually achieved great wealth and considerable renown, his inventions were often viewed—in his own day and subsequently—as derivative. Could an engineer today, or in any other time and place, have Fulton’s success while drawing so heavily on the work of others? Was his great contribution, as he always insisted, in making good ideas work? Is that talent still highly regarded today? If so, would it win the professional approbation that Fulton craved and at least partially achieved?
