ed the belief of Stephenson that steam-driven vehicles would
travel best on railed tracks.

In the development of the steamboat almost all earlier means of
propulsion, natural and artificial, were used as models by the
inventors. The fins of fishes, the webbed feet of amphibious birds, the
paddles of the Indian, and the poles and oars of the riverman, were all
imitated by the patient inventors struggling with the problem. Rumsey's
first effort was a copy of the old setting-pole idea. Fitch's model of
1785 had side paddle wheels operated by an endless chain. Fitch's second
and third models were practically paddle-wheel models, one having the
paddles at the side and the other at the stern. Ormsbee of Connecticut
made a model, in 1792, on the plan of a duck's foot. Morey made what may
be called the first real stern-wheeler in 1794. Two years later Fitch
ran a veritable screw propeller on Collect Pond near New York City.
Although General Benjamin Tupper of Massachusetts had been fashioning
devices of this character eight years previously, Fitch was the first to
apply the idea effectively. In 1798 he evolved the strange, amphibious
creation known as his "model of 1798," which has never been adequately
explained. It was a steamboat on iron wheels provided with flanges, as
though it was intended to be run on submerged tracks. What may have been
the idea of its inventor, living out his last gloomy days in Kentucky,
may never be known; but it is possible to see in this anomalous machine
an anticipation of the locomotive not approached by any other American
of the time. Thus, prior to 1800 almost every type of mechanism for
the propulsion of steamboats had been suggested and tried; and in 1804,
Stevens's twin-screw propeller completed the list.

It is not alone Fitch's development of the devices of the endless chain,
paddle wheel, and screw propeller and of his puzzling earth-and-water
creature that gives luster to his name. His prophetic insight into the
future national importance of the steamboat and his conception, as
an inventor, of his moral obligations to the people at large were as
original and striking in the science of that age as were his models.

The early years of the national life of the United States were the
golden age of monopoly. Every colony, as a matter of course, had granted
to certain men special privileges, and, as has already been pointed out,
the questions of monopolies and combinations in restraint of tr