Today is Thursday
Dec 04, 2008
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Speakers Bureau examines campus’s connection to John Fitch, inventor of the steamboat |
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 23, 2007 | | | WARMINSTER, PA – The Ann’s Choice Speakers Bureau recently presented “The Man Who Invented the Steamboat” in the Ann’s Choice Performing Arts Center. The digital presentation – which was narrated by Erik Fleisher, president of the Craven Hall Historical Society, and Ann’s Choice resident Harding Lindhult – included an overview of John Fitch’s life and his conception and invention of the steamboat in Bucks County in 1785.
Fitch’s first model was built and tested in a stream a short distance from Ann’s Choice. Ann Dawson, for whom Ann’s Choice is named, married Bartholomew Longstreth, a prosperous farmer who owned 1,000 acres in Warminster. Three of Ann and Bartholomew Longstreth’s children, Daniel, Isaac, and Joseph, were friends of John Fitch, and attested to the date and success of his invention.
During the presentation, Fleisher and Lindhult highlighted the story Fitch’s life beginning with his humble birth in Connecticut, his success as a silversmith prior to the American Revolution; his adventures on surveying trips across the country; his capture by Indians and imprisonment by the British until the end of the war, and his subsequent return to Warminster, where a fateful four-mile walk from the Neshaminy Meeting (now the Neshaminy Warwick Church) with a friend would become the inspiration for his invention.
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Fitch spent numerous hours inventing a steam engine on paper and brought the idea to Reverend Irwin, who informed him that the steam engine had been invented several years earlier in England. Despite his disappointment, Fitch continued with his concept and after determining that it was not workable for use on the rough local roads, he took the idea in another direction, to a boat against a current. Fitch worked in the shop of a fellow Warminster craftsman, James Scout, and built a 23-inch model boat with side-mounted paddles for a steam engine. In 1785, after completing the model, Fitch successfully tested it in a stream a short distance from Ann’s Choice. Harmon Van Sant, another neighbor who later lived in historic Craven Hall, also attested to the success of Fitch’s invention.
Fitch sought financial backing to build a boat and shared his plans with Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and members of the Continental Congress. Despite the favorable response of this impressive group, he did not receive any help and had to pull together the money to get started by selling shares in his steamboat company.
Since the British would not sell their technology to the former colonies, Fitch had to build an engine from scratch. He made several adaptations and finally built and launched his first boat in the Delaware River in May 1787. Later that summer, he unveiled his steamboat to delegates to the Constitutional Convention meeting in Philadelphia, and took several for the historic ride.
Fitch’s success as an inventor has been commemorated through memorials to him in Connecticut, New Jersey, and Kentucky, not to mention a fresco of John Fitch and his model that is in the Patent Corridor of the Senate Wing in the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Locally, there is currently a marker situated at the Northeast intersection of York and Street Roads in Warminster. To further honor Fitch’s pioneering and his invention, the John Fitch Steamboat Museum is planned to be constructed at Craven Hall in Warminster. (Lauren Campione)
For more information about Ann's Choice, click here!
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