Washington’s sophisticated western settlement and national defense strategy required that the only transportation technology available to 1780 United States was to cross the Appalachians and access the western hinterland by a linked network of rivers, canals and roads in order to connect the west to an Atlantic port city (Alexandria).

Left unsaid  thus far is whether such a hybrid transportation access was feasible given topographical and geologic realities and the limits of 1780 technology. Today, with all the progress we have made, the contemporary reader, knowing that at some point a solution obviously had to have been found, ignores the reality that Washington confronted. In his day opening up the trans-Appalachian west must have seen to many as a voyage to the moon or Mars. Sure there were stirrings of technological progress, but even if the Appalachians were not the Alps, canals did not cross over mountains. What has also been left largely unsaid is that the elites in the thirteen states did not uniformly share Washington’s obsession the West be settled. There was no transcontinental national consensus in 1780.

The easier path for the coastal northern cities (primarily New England) was to Europe, ship across the sea with faster and more storm-worthy ships. In their minds, the Mississippi was a river too far, and waiting a few decades to access it was no big deal. The future, at least the immediate future, was Europe. As we shall discover as this history unfolds was that the southern states, off the core European trade routes, forged their own path to progress, and that involved expanding into the western interior (often for different reasons), and encouraging immigration and settlement of the interior. Virginia led this line of thinking, and most of the Virginia Founding Fathers to one degree of another was “on-board” with the essentials of Washington’s strategy–it will be some surprise if we also include states like Maryland and South Carolina also.

That the western counties of the south–from Pennsylvania on down–were flooded with German, Huguenot and Scots-Irish migrants anxious to pour over the mountain and find their American Dream in the trans-Appalachian west was absolute proof to folk like Washington that there was money and an economic future in them-there-hills. If anything, Washington’s 1784 expedition revealed how crowded in his mind the east of the Appalachian western counties were filling up–and unless a way was found to cross over, who knows how this restive population evolve. The task of this module is to discuss how the two were combined and technological innovation of the navigation/transportation sector played a serious role in determining if, and when that strategy could be implemented in a timely fashion to achieve Washington’s national defense and unity objectives.

But again, to the original question posed in this module–could it really be done with existing transportation technology making a hybrid river-canal-road transportation (BTW they used the word navigation so fixed on water was their mentality) system not simply effective, but possible? When Washington left Mount Vernon to wander west in his expedition, he no doubt thought the current technology was going to work, he would simply make it work as best he could. When he came back to Mount Vernon at the end of his trip, he had serendipitously discovered a possible innovation that would almost revolutionize access into America’s interior: the steamboat and its steam-powered engine.  So, through the backdoor innovation and technology became a vital part of Washington’s western settlement/national defense economic development paradigm. Who would have “thunk”? Was Washington doomed to play Elon Musk in the 1780’s? Let’s see. But first, let’s ground our expectations and put 1780 Washington in some sort of innovation context. Without this context, this module is just a cute story, not the opening chapter of American economic development innovation policy.

Technology and Innovation: transformation of the navigation/transportation sector

Innovation is a cornerstone paradigm of contemporary American economic development. Combined with a strong belief in knowledge-driven economic growth, innovation, the king of which was usually the development of platform technology which creates and transforms economic sectors and industries, spawned an entrepreneurial culture that can produce new forms of economic and even social growth–possibly the only feasible way to reverse climate change–is the only real alternative path for American ED. While the innovation and knowledge-based paradigmatic nexus shares the landscape with other paradigms, it seems to hold sway and dominates the commanding heights of contemporary economic development.

Interestingly, however, is that for various reasons (ego, the Internet, the Computer, and the development of information technology sector) innovation and American ED is thought by most to be a relatively recent evolution. While feebly acknowledging earlier theorists, Schumpeter, writing in the 1940’s, is often regarded as the theoretical Messiah of innovation. Bluntly, I want to change that. America economic development does not begin in 1965 or whenever magically innovation and technology takes over–the Fourth, Fifth or Whatever Industrial Revolution we are presently in, or the post-Industrial economy, or the Third Wave of American ED. In one way or another all play to the egos of baby boomers who have set the pace in each of these, at least to their (my) mind. Rather, I must confess that in the decade and half I have been researching this tedious volume, it is so plainly observed that technology, innovation, knowledge has been impactful in economic development from our very beginning–which artificially is usually thought to be 1789. We glorify Franklin with his kite, but really that’s not innovation and technology and real science. Neither is the combustion engine–it can’t compare to the Internet and PC. Sadly, on a rant employing straw men galore, I beg to differ. As the reader will see, I am almost  about to cross the thin red line to assert Washington is my first official venture capitalist.

I don’t really believe that–there were hundreds before Washington. But somebody has to be the first American venture capitalist so why not him? As to the innovation, the steamboat, it did open up the West–but not on Washington’s schedule. Washington’s steamboat enterprise will fail, and it will fail along with all the other steamboat technologies until they find the right person  in 1807 to finally combine technology and market viability with the then-current state of patent law. I guess that is innovative entrepreneurship?  Part of Washington’s problem was that he had to assume leadership over development of America’s first patent law. He assigned it to Jefferson. Was that a mistake. But we get way ahead of ourselves–all that is in a future module, actually several. The other problem was technology innovation took its own sweet time. When the Erie Canal opened up the West/Midwest in 1825, it used a pole boat without the poles, propelled by mules on a tow path. Bluntly, the combustion engine just did not develop the oomph that was needed to cross over the Appalachians until the railroad in the 1820’s, late 1820’s.

The reader may ask: What is the value of better understanding obsolete or ancient technologies and innovation during the Early Republic? First the obvious and unwanted answer that current innovation and technology-based entrepreneurism evolved from its early beginnings. By including it in the American Constitution (and Washington did play a behind-the-scenes role in that), and setting up the first patent law in 1791, he did set up the platform and process by which it evolved. Useful as that may be to historians and legal scholars, it doesn’t help contemporary economic developers understand and implement innovation/technological change in their strategies –except it does.

When we examine in long detail the evolution of early American ED innovation and technology policy and programs, created from scratch, and cobbled together over many, many decades, we can see what we cannot see today: the policy infrastructure that underlies the formulation, legitimization, and implementation of innovation/technological change. That infrastructure includes: the rule of law, how to cope with simultaneous innovation, the importance of property law and ideological values associated with property rights in intellectual property, the crazy and erratic role of entrepreneurship, the linkages between investment, market demand, and commercialization, and the distinction and temporal implications of applied technology versus commercialization of technology. Finally, we shall see the reality of what economic development innovation and technology programs have experienced in the various policy systems of our state, local and, yes, federal government–innovation policy is a policy made by policy systems in a federal democratic policy system and capitalist (whatever that means) economic base. Patterns do emerge on these, and they offer some contemporary insight. Oh, BTW, is there are relationship between innovation/technology change and populism?

Finally, we will be forced to confront the serendipitous role of “people” in innovation and technology change–and personalities–and surprisingly the variation in innovation as creates and revolutionizes the business cycle, the local economic base, and aggregates/clusters of different sectors and industries. Innovation and technology has produced many effects, consequences, and impacts on society, politics and the economy–some have led to growth, and some are credited, or blamed for hollowing us out. Still others do not even throw off impactful disruption or benefits. It may open us up to the traitorous but disruptive thought that innovation is just one more of those buzz words that periodically infest our history, a word without inherent meaning, but large symbolic, ideological and motivational impact. Oh well, like Washington I wander in the wilderness.

And Now Finally the Story Behind Washington and Innovation–the Early Years Before the Constitution

Just What is a Canal Anyway? What is Canal Technology Simply, and Probably Inadequately, Explained?

Canals had been critical Dutch and English infrastructure that made possible their early rise of capitalism and industrialization. Canals, of course, go back to ancient times–the Grand Canal of China for example (5th century BC) and the Grand Canal of Venice (13th century) is a tourist delight. There is one important “detail” however, that underlies each of these canals: the topography is relatively flat. In case you forgot, George’s canal climbs one side of the Appalachian Mountains and goes down the other side. Water does not usually flow up; rather it flows, spasms with rainfall and melting, down. The current is downward and that is great (somewhat), but a river boat has to go back up–with people and cargoes. That’s where the first and most burdensome problem is for Washington. River navigation has to be a two way street and the Potomac decidedly was not cooperating.

Washington’s last days on the 1784 expedition were consumed with his wandering around the top of the Potomac-James relevant mountains. He knew before he started this obsession that this section of his system was going to involve roads–the shorter and less angled the better. Roads would connect the two sets of river systems. That was planned and expected. His wanderings suggested the road system envisioned was workable, but in his defense he was not at all convinced it was going to be easy. In any case, the reader should understand Washington’s (and any other canal scheme of the day in America) was a hybrid river-canal–and road system. Word of clarification. Canal meant those sections of the river that needed a channel to be cleared and dredged, maybe a “tow path”, and something called a “lock”.

Boats required a certain “draft” (deepness of the bottom) so they float on by unimpeded by the river’s bottom–that’s why a channel is dredged/cleared. Tow paths and locks address another problem: rivers flow unevenly and they can rise/fall rather dramatically. This is what the previously mentioned “Fall Line” was: a geographic phenomena that ran the entire course (north-south) of the Appalachians, about 900 miles) where rapids and cliffs (think waterfalls) were a single solid line, intercepting any river that flowed downward. The English and Dutch, Washington’s role models, did not have to worry about a Fall Line (potentially in both directions, east and west). They could simply connect two dots on a relatively level surface. Also it might be noticed–Washington did not attempt to tie into Pennsylvania, or even North Carolina, his route was horizontal, east-west, not north-south. That meant Virginia was the terminus–that gives new mean to “carry me back to ole Virginny”.

In Washington’s day, river transportation had to “break bulk” at the Fall Lines (and wherever there were sheer drops in the river), and “portage”–take the cargo or people and walk them on the ground to a higher/lower point to transfer to a new boat. Cities often developed along fault lines (Richmond). Portage/break bulk is expensive and time-consuming, not to mention inconvenient. When the rise/and decline is moderate a tow path, horses & mules on the tow path could tie onto the boat and drag it up–this was a famous feature of the famous Erie Canal–Upstate NY was moderately flat and tow lines were common.

Most people when they think of canals, they think of locks. Where the river’s rise/decline, however, was abrupt, a lock had to be constricted–and that was really expensive and  required constant maintenance and labor because a lock is a stretch of walled canal, whose ends had doors which could be opened and closed, in which water was pumped in or out to raise/lower the water level. Washington’s Potomac Canal would eventually require three sets of locks. Locks were a real problem. This folks is where our good old “innovation” and the importance of technology becomes critical if not absolutely necessary. One had to be able to build a walled canal in solid rock, and have mechanical doors powered by engines, and pumps able to pump water. Where one could store or drain off water was another feature.

In the next module, the reader will see locks of such mechanical complexity were on the edges of 1780 technology. They required engines, steam or combustion engines which were mostly in prototype, about a decade more or less since they had been first tested (James Watt). BTW Washington’s co-Patriot Benjamin Franklin was a innovator of great repute because he had “discovered”  electricity–he, and nobody else, yet had any commercial idea as to how to make it useful–which mean what was going to “power” this uninvented machinery? He had some hope this technology could be fabricated. Americans had encountered this issue previously, and had begun to experiment and had improvised. Lock-relevant technology will be discussed in the next module, but Washington had a real innovation and technology problem beyond locks — there is more …

I could mention weather (winter and droughts/floods closed the canal and river down), but even more basic than that.

At its most basic level, Washington needed a boat–that could handle cargo and people–and could go upstream against the current.It gets worse, but lock-relevant technology is in the next module.

Canal Infrastructure and Innovation Nexus: the Steamboat and Steamboat Engine

A wee bit of background may be helpful in appreciating this tale of technology and innovation.

Canal boats in Washington’s day were “pole-driven”. Men with poles “pushed” the boat along manually–watch Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett and Mike Fink [1] episode to see a pole boat in operation. Lots of fun to watch, but pole or keel boats were little more than man-driven “tramp steamers” on a river, making few profits, with cargoes limited to what could be pushed. Heading upstream meant even lighter loads. Canals (and locks) made it  possible to employ mules or horses along the lock’s tow path to pull the boat along, but the boat had to get to the lock in the first place. Pole boats stopped at river falls, and the cargo “ported” to the next clear river passage.

Pole boats were expensive, slow, and troublesome. Men had to rest and sleep at night–wasted time–and a night on the town was often a fearsome thing to behold because legend has it the men who poled these boats like to drink–and they exercised regularly. Washington up to 1784 assumed this was to be his mode of transportation. Washington’s hope that canals could unify and protect the nation, and make a buck for him doing it, was based on this ancient mode of transportation. It is not unreasonable to expect he was looking for alternatives.

the Best Beer Washington Ever Drank

The story starts with Washington’s 1784 survey tour into the western hinterlands–the same one in which he stumbled into Gallatin. On the way back (October 4th), he stopped for the night at a remote tavern in Bath Virginia, 125 miles away from Mount Vernon (today, Berkeley Springs West Virginia). Washington owned property in Bath, and he took advantage of Bath’s warm springs which encouraged a vibrant health-tourism cluster. Forgive a wee bit of a tangent, Washington stayed at Bath because even in 1784 it was a consciously tourist town, with an entertainment, religious and health constituency (wealthy elites–most of the Virginian Founding Fathers went there). There were inns/restaurants/hotels (usually the same building) of fair quality with some conveniences available.

When Washington arrived  he was in high spirits–and totally locked onto his new canal-river navigation mission. Still, old habits are hard to break, Washington was on the scout for new property and even to build in Bath and by this time he was convinced he had a route that would work out, a river that was navigable with few locks and roads that could be built [1a]. So if he had work to do in Bath, he also could celebrate a bit, and take a bath, if only for Martha’s sake.

A new inn, “Sign of the Liberty Pole and Flag” (catchy name to be sure),  had just opened and had previously advertised its upscale features to attract an upscale clientele by “catering to their every whim”.

In Berkeley County, five bathing houses, with adjacent dressing rooms, … an assembly room and theater … for the innocent and rational amusement of the polite … The American Company of Comedians is expected will open there …’The Muses follow Freedom’ said Socrates. From Greece and Rome they certainly fled when these mighty empires fell. Let us hail therefore, their residence in America’ [1b].

Washington when he arrived at Bath, gave it a try. I imagine that after a hard day on the trail, Washington, who did not mind indulging in spirited drink, ordered a cold beer to quench his thirst. I think, as far as economic development goes, it was the best beer he every drank.

The Inn’s owner-entrepreneur, a risk-taker to be sure, was also a natural born salesman, and he saw in Washington an opportunity to sell his wares and make his  It worked. Washington hired him that night, to buy/build on two more properties in the Bath area. But after a couple of more beers, the innkeeper-owner asked if he wanted to see his etchings, I mean mechanical model. Along with being a real estate broker/builder, the innkeeper touted his amazing invention. He was an outstanding inventor; he claimed. He had devised a “mechanical boat”–let’s be frank here, a boat with something called an engine on it that propelled the poles on a keel boat. The innkeeper had not yet built a scale-up model for the contraption, but he demonstrated to Washington that night a miniature version in a pan of water. The little miniature boat that could poled its way across the pan propelled by its little motor.

This is only part of the story, the rest will be told below–but suffice it to say  (1) Washington was impressed. The night at the inn is described in detail in Washington’s diary. What Washington had just seen was an unknown form of boat–which within another year or two would be propelled by a steam engine. AKA Washington had just seen what was among the very first steamboats in existence, fifty one years before Mark Twain’s birth, and twenty-three years before Robert Fulton’s Hudson River model.

… the principles of this [machine] were not only shewn and fully explained … but … exhibited in practice in private under the injunction of Secresy … The model & its operation upon the water which had been made to run pretty swift … convinced me … that it might be turned to the greatest possible utility in inland Navigation [1c].

Who was this innkeeper-owner? How had he wound up in Bath on October 4th, 1784? His name is James Rumsey. He was a self-taught, handsome, forty-one year old, Maryland-born, son of a farmer.  Somehow an excellent blacksmith, he developed his skills to become a millright. He probably fought in the Revolution, settled in Baltimore for awhile, and then established a milling business in Sleepy Creek Maryland in 1782. He was married and his home was in Shepherdstown. In 1784, he was resident in Bath where he owned a milling business, the inn and boardinghouse, a store, and built homes. There was a little more to his biography, however.

Rumsey started his steamboat experimentation in 1780, he constructed and refined his “miniature model”, but the working model of pole-driving steam-powered engine quickly ran out of money. So in 1780 (still in the midst of the Revolutionary War) he appeared before the Articles of Confederation Congress to petition for a grant of western lands that he could either use for collateral or sell to finance his invention. We shall explain this odd request in greater detail in another module, but suffice it to say it was a customary way for inventors to raise venture capital in the colonial era. Other inventors were attempting the same, including another pole-driven steamboat competitor–Rumsey was not alone in this idea. The Continental Congress set up a sub-committee to reach a decision, but the matter remained unresolved through 1784, when the competitor and Rumsey “merged” and formed a partnership. That hiatus is why Rumsey retreated to Bath and his tavern/boardinghouse and real estate business. He was waiting on the Articles Congress to grant him his western lands so he had the funds to continue development of his model and to attempt its working prototype–the next step in colonial commercialization. In walked Washington to order his beer.

Washington Becomes a Technology Venture Capitalist

The design of the boat itself was secondary, what really mattered was it was propelled by an engine and that it was shallow draft (cargo and people on the deck, not under it). The engine could carry heavier cargoes, and potentially solve the earlier-described upstream problem. What Washington witness, however, did not involve a combustion engine using steam power–although in fairness Rumsey had been thinking on applying Watt’s steam engine to the apparatus [2].

The innkeeper’s engine delivered power to operate a mechanical pole-driven boat–no pole men–and it seemed to work. So Washington decided then and there to become a venture capitalist. Washington personally invested in the the model–and sustained the innovation until the innkeeper-inventor, James Rumsey died in 1792. Flexner quoting from correspondence and a series of meetings over several years, clearly demonstrates Washington’s close involvement with The Innkeeper aka inventor and Rumsey’s tale.

The Innkeeper, the reader might be alerted, is one of the two (or three) main contenders for the American “invention” of the steamboat–that in fact is no small part of the story below. Our history takes no formal position on who was the “first”–an as yet unmentioned competitor, a fellow named Fitch, got the credit–probably deservedly.All that lay in the future and most of it will be told in a later module–a module which will demonstrate its impact on the American Constitution and the first patent law of the Early Republic. For the moment, we will trace only Rumsey and introduce Washington’s relationship with him and his invention–alluding to the place in Washington’s national economic development and defense paradigm.

Washington and his friends quickly got involved, deeply, with Rumsey–and even in these early years in the competitive struggle with the competitor Fitch.. That night Washington prepared a letter of introduction for the innkeeper (Remember a letter from Washington was no trivial matter). The letter said that he believed “this a marvelous and unique invention as ‘of vast importance, maybe of the greatest usefulness” for the purpose of moving the boat upstream“. In his diary Washington recorded that the boat/engine “would render the present epoch favorable above all others for securing … a large proportion of the product of the western settlements, and of the fur and peltry of the lakes … also binding these people to us [instead of neighboring foreign nations] by a chain that can never be broken” [3]. Washington introduced him to sympathetic supporters such as Jefferson, Madison, and John Marshall–all traveled to Rumsey’s Inn in Bath. But the story continues, and assumes an unanticipated new direction.

Rumsey, having enlisted Washington, and Jefferson’s support and armed with such support contacted a number of Washington’s associates from which he secured financing  and political support not only to improve upon his concept, but also assemble a powerful lobbying group to secure governmental funding.  In particular, Rumsey, revisited his earlier Congressional application–and his powerful support motivated the Articles’ sub-committee to approve the grant of western lands–if the model could produce a real steamboat that ran 50 miles a day for six consecutive days without breaking. Rumsey peddled the (Articles) Congressional decision to Maryland and Pennsylvania state legislatures, which granted state monopolies to him. Washington stepped in directly as did Madison and Jefferson. Now Rumsey could use the state monopolies as security to raise additional venture capital.

Washington, it might be added, was conducted his own due diligence on canals and canal-related technology. That due diligence included an extended weekend meeting at Mount Vernon (1785) with a canal and technology enthusiast/proponent, young Robert Fulton-whom as the reader knows would two decades or so later, develop the first successful commercial application of America’s steamboat technology.

Rumsey seemed to be on a roll, but at that critical juncture Washington hired him to direct the construction of his canal. That will be discussed in the next module. But now, let’s dwell on the steamboat innovation and carry it to 1787.

Articles of Confederation Patent Process Implodes

First, some background. American colonial patent law [4] and James Rumsey.  Colonial patent law by default was incorporated into the Articles of Confederation. Accordingly, by today’s standards it was rudimentary, decentralized to the state-level, and, operated roughly within the confines of British patent law which forbade the exporting of British patents. If Rumsey or his competitors wanted to take advantage of James Watt’s innovation, they had to secure his approval and have it endorsed by British legislation. The first known colonial patent had been issued by the Massachusetts legislature in 1646 to a inventor who built a mill to power the production of wheat scythes. From that point forward, colonial patents were awarded through a political decision by a colonial legislature. (I’m not sure much has changed saved the bureaucracy has replaced the legislature–but I am a cynic).

Lacking much in the way of formal patent authority (limited as they were by British patent law), the mechanism state legislatures devised to provide patent protection (i.e. sidestep British patent law) was to create a state monopoly of the commercial use of the patent. Inherent in this were that individual property rights and intellectual property were somewhat fused, and competitors ran afoul of an artificial market monopoly. Of course, one could shop states but that led to an enormous and not very efficient innovation system. By Rumsey’s time, inventors seeking protections similar to a patent relied charisma and self-promotion to construct a wealthy and influential network of advocates able to secure majorities in state legislatures.

While Rumsey was working on Washington’s canal (1785-6), he took his eyes off the ball, his steamboat innovation and technology experimentation. In 1785 a new competitor emerged in Philadelphia. A fellow named John Fitch, born in Connecticut in the same year as Rumsey (1743), with a more than an interesting background, He had a really quirky personality, a really bad marriage, and was really captured and tortured by Indians. None of this helped matters much in this story. Compared to Rumsey, Fitch seemingly would have an uphill battle.

Fitch finally settled in Warminster  PA .Only in 1785 did he start working on steamboats. But instead of accepting the conventional pole technology as Rumsey had done, Fitch  made the giant leap almost from the start to experiment with the new-fangled combustion/steam engine. He heard  through the grapevine of English James Watt’s latest improvement to the English steam boiler and parlayed his limited understanding of what Watt was up to into working models, largely on his own, finding financial support wherever he could. He is my candidate for the Father of Crowdfunding.

BTW James Watt between 1763 and 1775, back in the old mother-country England, had embarked on a series of designs and prototypes based on still earlier steam combustion designs–combustion engines experimentation was widespread, there were others who were also developing prototypes as well–one of whom was Benjamin Franklin. In this very crowded competition of technologies, Fitch began his efforts to develop a viable steamboat prototype on Philadelphia’s Susquehanna River. Did I mention that Philadelphia was the nation’s largest, wealthiest port city, and oft-times the de facto capital of the Articles of Confederation. That really helped because Rumsey when he returned to steamboat experimentation, it was in the mighty metropolis of Shepherdstown Maryland.

 

In 1875 Fitch presented his designs to the highly influential American Philosophical Society, conveniently located in Philadelphia. With some support that followed from his presentation, Fitch petitioned several state legislatures for state monopolies, as Rumsey had done earlier. He also petitioned the Articles of Confederation Congress for a western land grant similar to Rumsey  the previous year. The Articles Congress, having already granted land for the benefit of Rumsey’s steamboat monopoly (because of Rumsey’s influential friends) simply returned the petition by mail to Fitch. Fitch now officially knew of Rumsey’s enterprise (almost certainly he had found out earlier), and he resolved to convince the state of Maryland to grant lobby on his behalf. He met with Governor Johnson. It is likely, however, at this point he identified Rumsey’s project as comprising a pole boat–not a steamboat because Rumsey not yet disclosed the engine publicly.

Johnson knew Rumsey personally, and his iron forge was already engaged in making components for Rumsey. When he met with Fitch and learned he was pitching a steamboat (which the Governor thought a wild and crazy idea), he recognized the two inventors were probably competitors. Johnson listened and urged Fitch to meet with Washington and talk the matter over with him. Both intimidated and optimistic, Fitch quickly made his way to Mount Vernon, arriving unannounced at his porch. Washington welcomed him and gave him his undivided attention in a private session. In Fitch’s words: “I had a most favorable opportunity of laying my plans before him, as no company intervened”.

As the discussion unfurled Fitch became aware that Washington seemed increasingly ill-at-ease, and Fitch asked him if Washington’s association with Rumsey was in some way an issue in helping with Fitch’s steamboat. Washington responded that he was sworn to secrecy on the matter of Rumsey’s project. Washington then offered Fitch the opportunity to spend the night at Mount Vernon–and he abruptly left the room. He returned shortly after and as Fitch describes it Washington, probably awkwardly, made comments to the effect that the initial prototype that started the project in Bath had evolved since then, and the two projects now seem close in intent. Accordingly, Washington indicated he could not write a letter of support for Fitch to the state legislature. The meeting ended with Fitch leaving thinking he had no letter, but that Rumsey’s project did not compete with Fitch’s–which in reality it did.

As he thought things over, Fitch later believed Washington had been disingenuous with him–Fitch also somehow believed Washington regretted the Rumsey letter, which is not likely. The matter got complicated. Washington, Flexner argues, had wanted to be fair to Fitch and make him aware the two projects were in competition, but had obviously done so in a manner insufficient to penetrate Fitch’s hopeful and optimistic mindset. Fitch did not see that Washington had, in fact, refused to support his project.

Washington, on the other hand, was in a dither. How much of Fitch’s meeting could/should he disclose to Rumsey? It took two months for him to resolve before he contacted Rumsey, urging him to speed up his project, and further hinting that Rumsey’s engine could be embraced by other inventors if he did not. He indicated he had met with such an unnamed inventor who was asking for Washington’s letter of support. Washington confessed he did not outline the details of Rumsey’s project”but I did not think it proper to say what it was not”. That’s clear. No wonder Fitch was confused [4a]

This seemed unfair to Fitch; he thought he was fighting some version of the deep swamp and crony capitalism–and given his quirky personality his interpretation of the aggregation of meetings with the Founding Fathers, and his reception by the Articles Congress made quite an impression on his peers to whom he sought for help to rectify the injustice. Without conscious thought or planning, Fitch was heading down a path similar to Washington’s Seceeders in the forests of Pennsylvania. Inadvertently, the quest for a patent/monopoly for his technology and project was verging on becoming a elite-mass clash with his lower and artisan class supporters/funders investing less in his technology than in support of a push back against unfair elites.

Fitch, now “highly motivated” publicly blasted “the ignorant boys of Congress“. He made a personal appeal to Washington visiting at Mount Vernon. Washington met with him for several hours, but in the end told Fitch he supported Rumsey. Fitch then met with Benjamin Franklin, who in 1785 had independently wrote a paper (titled “Mechanical Inventions“) while on ship crossing the Atlantic, literally at the same time Rumsey was meeting with Washington. That paper outlined a steamboat propelled by water thrust created by an engine. Franklin, America’s most acknowledged inventor, aka scientist, had his own dog in that fight. but met with Fitch anyway. Franklin “politely” told Fitch that his support was behind Rumsey, while offering Fitch $4 for his designs. Fitch, in contrast to the naturally genial, salesman Rumsey had an incredibly volatile personality and temper, tending to paranoid obsessions. Fitch did not take all these “no”s very well.

Not without merit, Fitch believed the political/economic “establishment” was backing Rumsey, to his considerable detriment. Naturally, he considered his prototype superior to Rumsey, and he refused to take a second seat to him. Fitch got “blue-collar populist” in his approach; he enlisted support of artisans, small business owners, and mechanics who were both numerous and influential in Philadelphia politics. Working with a new immigrant canal enthusiast, Christopher Colles (who later moved to New York and conceptualized what was later to be the Erie Canal–what a small world this was, huh), and other local investors. Fitch formed his state chartered steamboat company in April 1786 selling shares at a modest $20, raising only $300. This was my first opportunity to discover a pre-Early Republic version of that 21st Century innovation called peer lending. Who would have thought this totally sexy innovative/disruptive post-industrial form of lending was in use two-hundred and fifty years earlier?

But Fitch, shades of HBO’s Silicon Valley, not a salesman by any means, soon got in a quarrel with his investors, and bypassed them by securing new monopoly grants in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and New York. Pennsylvania, if one might remember, had already granted a monopoly to Rumsey. This set up an divisive and polarizing, highly publicized conflict within the Pennsylvania state legislature–which was on the second floor of a building that housed the Articles of Confederation legislature. Fitch argued his position forceably, and in so doing both alerted influential observers as to the importance of patents and the clumsiness of monopolies. Fitch also exposed to key political elites the need to establish a comprehensive, coherent patent/innovation system–and to him and his fight with Rumsey the issue became part and parcel of what would soon be Federalist Party orthodoxy.

Once again, in 1787, he petitioned the Articles Congress for a land grant, and its committee chair, James Madison for a national monopoly on steamboat travel. The subcommittee duly considered his application, but made any support contingent on Fitch’s public demonstration of his steamboat prototype. Madison, of course, had invested in Rumsey’s enterprise. By that time, Rumsey was back on track, having abandoned his pole-driven engine in favor of a Watts-like steam engine. The steamboat race was on–as each inventor rushed to complete his prototype and demonstrate its viability publicly.

Fitch’s successful public demonstration was held on the Delaware in September 1787, with Continental Congress members in attendance (not Washington, I might add). Rumsey slightly behind the eight-ball, despite his powerful friends and earlier start. held his successful public demonstration in far-away Shepherdstown. As we shall soon realize, Shepherdstown was no steamboat Silicon Valley–at least compared to Philadelphia. After a frustrating year of experimenting with his engine in his new and off-the-beaten track location, Rumsey abandoned the pole technology, and like Fitch turned to the steam combustion engine. Like Fitch, on his own Rumsey, developed his own steam-making boiler, also similar to Watt. He commenced his own prototype experiments on the out-of-sight, out-of-mind Potomac. On December 3, 1787 Rumsey successfully demonstrated his boat/engine in a public demonstration in Shepherdstown–three months after Fitch.

 

Steamboat technology was operative and available for commercialization by the end of 1787–but a mere three years after Washington drank the best beer in his life, its memory began to turn bitter. Rumsey’s technology needed help, and Fitch’s technology was successful. For the next three years or so Fitch operated a steamboat line and his engine put over three thousand miles on it. Rumsey’s about a 1000 feet.

Innovation thus far had been messy at best–and it was going to get much worse during the next decade. What we can see is a horrible and heavily politicized patent policy system suffering under the impact of simultaneous innovation, in obvious conflict with British patent law, and without Watt’s concurrence.

Innovation Enters the Federalist Policy Agenda–and the New American Constitution

The bitter and very public competition between Rumsey and Fitch led to a intense and somewhat dysfunctional steamboat rivalry. In the long run, both inventors would fall far short of their hopes and steamboat commercialization languished until Robert Fulton in 1807 chugged on down the Hudson. In the short run, however, the rivalry pushed patent law onto the agenda of the Constitutional Convention-ultimately leading to an article dedicated to patents and innovation in the Constitution.

By early 1787 it was fast becoming evident the Articles were going to be replaced by a new Republic and a new Constitution. The Continental Convention, held in Philadelphia the locus of much of the steamboat controversy, certainly had many weighty matters to determine for its new proposed Constitution, including slavery, form of government, and electoral system. Off to the side, but important none-the-less was discussion on the nature of the new Republic’s economy, economic growth and wealth creation. These were among Washington’s  chief concerns as they were with many of his Virginia neighbors–Madison and Jefferson in particular–who were also deeply involved in the Patowmack venture.

For them interstate commerce and the need for a stronger national government to coordinate interstate rivalries, was a key concern and top priority of the aspirations for the state of Virginia. Technology innovation was an important priority in the anticipated race between the states to cross the Appalachians. If anything had been made clear by the Fitch-Rumsey confrontation–which by that time had polarized several state legislatures–was that American patent law and processes badly needed reform, and the Thirteen States had to be herded into a common corral by a stronger more assertive national government. Washington indeed had many priorities, but he had not wandered that far from his need for steamboat canal technology.

So James Madison and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney on August 18, 1787 filed a motion to insert a section in the proposed Constitution. The Madison/Pinckney motion specified the bottom line goal of U.S. patent policy should be to empower the national government to impose order on the Thirteen States “to secure to literary authors their copyrights for a limited time, and to encourage by premiums and provisions, the advancement of useful knowledge and discoveries“ [5]. The phrase, useful knowledge and discoveries, meant they wanted to create a system of patents for agriculture, manufacture, and trade. The committee reviewed the bill and two weeks later, the Committee Report was included, by Convention vote, into the proposed Constitution, as Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8–which, in its own good time, was approved by the thirteen states.

The new Constitution placed responsibility for patents within the purview of the  Secretary of State–and that was to be Jefferson in the Washington Administration. In the three year interim  the Fitch and Rumsey dispute degenerated into fruitless patent fight that literally consumed both of them–and their ventures. Rumsey, traveled to England, successfully convinced James Watt to join with him in a partnership that shared Watt’s patent–and then Watt backed out. Rumsey stayed in London trying to complete his designs and file a patent there, and simultaneously to enlist investors. Rumsey poured his all into the steamboat project, and in 1792 he was able to make a formal presentation of it to the British Royal Academy (in 1792). In the process of delivering the speech, he suffered a stroke, was carried from the presentation and died in a few hours.

Fitch, after three years of moderately successful operation of his steamboat, entered into a series of conflicts with his investors, politicians. He spiraled into a personal darkness that led him to wander from communities, becoming both an alcoholic, whose only relief was opium. One evening he combined them both, probably intentionally, and died, a suicide in 1798. The patents which each Fitch and Rumsey held remained, but were, of course, inactive. Of the two patents, Fitch whose steamboat had successfully operated for three years, was far superior to Rumsey’s more prestigious prototypes that had not be commercialized. It was Fitch’s patent rights that were eventually picked up by Robert Fulton and his venture capital investor, Robert Livingston. In 1807, Fitch’s old technology in a new steamboat, the Clermont, sailed down the Hudson.

 

 

Footnotes:

[1] Mike Fink was a real, honest-to-God historical character. He really lived and was an Ohio River keelboat (pole boat) owner. He lived between 1770 and 1824. It was said he could drink a gallon of whiskey and then shoot the tail off a pig. Born in the Pittsburgh area, he might have died–nobody’s certain–on an expedition into the mountains, shot by a rival. I do not claim him as an economic developer–just thought you might want to know.

[1a] Joel Achenbach, the Grand Idea (Simon & Schuster, 2004), p. 122

[1b] Advertisement in the Maryland Gazette, quoted in James Thomas Flexner, Steamboats Come True: American Inventors in Action (Fordham University Press, 1944, 1992), p. 67

[1c] Washington’s Diary, quoted in Joel Achenbach, the Grand Idea, p.63

[2] James Thomas Flexner, Steamboats Come True (Fordham University Press, 1944, 2nd Ed 1992) See Chapter 5, p. 64ff.

[3] Peter Bernstein, Wedding of the Waters: the Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation ( W.W. Norton & Company, 2005), pp. 68-9.

[4] Thomas Cox, Gibbons v. Ogden, Law and Society in the Early Republic (Ohio University Press, 2009); I rely heavily on Cox for observations on this subject, and have in a few short paragraphs summarized in my words much of his first chapter.

[4a] James Thomas Flexner, Steamboats Come True: American Inventors in Action, pp. 83-6

[5] Thomas Cox, Gibbons v. Ogden, Law and Society in the Early Republic, p. 10.