Transportation
What was the transportation issue:
- horses and wagons on dirt roads, sleighs, costal shipping
- after the revolution there was a great need to unify the
separate
colonies by better transportation
- without good transportation most farmers away from the
cities
grew what they needed, didn't sell much
- Americans didn't have the engineering expertise to build
canals,
etc., had to bring in experts from elsewhere
- distances to be covered were much larger than in Europe
Roads
- better transportation was less controversial
than factories--needed to knit the new nation together and make
possible westward expansion
- states chartered turnpike companies to build
and improve roads at private expense and make money by tolls
- roads were cleared and leveled but still
dirt--didn't require a lot of expertise (see
how to build a road )
- wooden
bridges were generally built by local carpenters
1836
Covered Bridge
Canals:
Santee
Canal , South Carolina
- The Santee Canal from the Santee River to
the Cooper River was the first full-fledged transportation canal in the
United States, slightly preceding the much better-known Middlesex Canal
in Massachusetts.
- surveys for a canal to bring goods to
Charleston began in 1770 but the plan was put on hold during the
revolution.
- in 1785 a charter was granted; it helped
that
the president of the canal company was also governor of the state
- work began in 1793 and it was opened in
1800. The supervisor of the project was Col. Christian Senf
(1750-1806), a Swedish (or German)-born and Dutch-trained engineer who
had served with Hessian
troops during the Revolution. (For more
information: "Col. Senf's Account of the Santee Canal." Edited by Mabel
L. Webber. South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, 28
(January, April 1927), pp. 8-21, 112-131.)
- The Santee Canal was 22 miles long and had
10
locks; it cost $650,000 to build
- drought dried it up 1817-1819, but generally
it was successful until 1840, when railroads superseded it.
Middlesex Canal Massachusetts
( canal
association )
- In 1793 a private company was formed to
build a canal from the Merrimack river at what would be Lowell to the
Charles River (leading into Boston)
- the supervisor of the project was a local
cabinetmaker and surveyor, but local surveying skills weren't good
enough to measure
changes in level (essential for a canal)
- Finally they had to hire an
expert engineer from England names
William Weston, who
taught the local people the specialized knowledge
needed to build a canal. - The
finished canal was 27 miles long, with 20 locks, 8 aqueducts, and 48
bridges. It was finally successfully completed in 1803 at a total
cost of $1,164,200.
- three Americans involved in the project went
on to be successful canal engineer
PEM Photo--remains of a lock staircase on the Champlain canal
Erie
Canal
- A canal from the Great Lakes to the Hudson
River at Albany was an early dream
- in 1810 New York mayor
DeWitt Clinton convinced himself it was possible because the
highest land along the route is only 570 feet above the Hudson, even
though the distance to be covered was 363 miles
- canal commissioners were appointed and in
1817 construction began
- four Principal Engineers were found
locally--Canvass White was sent to Europe to study canals. "After
walking over 2,000 miles examining these canals, he returned to New
York in 1818 with the latest surveying devices and precise drawings of
the most important structures
on the English canals. " ( source
)
- the Principal Engineers trained their
assistants, by 1825 all but one Principal Engineer had worked their way
up in the canal system (erie
canal locks )
- the Erie Canal was completed in 1825 at a
cost of $7 million ( the
marriage of the waters )
- earned $500,000 the first year, paid back
its
cost in 7 years, and soon was earning $3 million a year ( 1829 image
)
- at least 11 of the 24 Principal Engineers
went on to other engineering work. Canvass White went on to serve
as chief engineer of the Lehigh, Delaware, Raritan, and Union canals
and developed a waterpower system for mills in Cohoes, NY.
PEM Photo--remains of the original first lock of the Erie Canal
Steam Boats
John
Fitch (1743-1798)
- had only a few years of schooling but hated
life on the family farm so he became a silversmith ( source )
- built a workable boat in Philadelphia in
1787
using vertical
paddles and started regular service, but wasn't commercially
successful
- got a U.S. patent on a steamboat in 1791
after a battle with Rumsey over priority
- gave up after the commercial failure of his
steamboat service and committed suicide biography
James Rumsey (1743-1792)
- originally a millwright, then build locks
for canals
- tested a number of boats on the Potomac
River
at Washington DC but never fully successfully
- used a
jet-propulsion system (Benjamin Franklin had said paddlewheels
wouldn't work)
Fulton
Robert Fulton
(1765-1815)
- an American who worked for a jeweler and
then went to England and France to study to be an artist and became
interested in engineering
- built an early workable submarine
for Napoleon in 1800
- first built a steamboat in France in 1803
but
backers were disappointed the speed was much less than promised
- found a backer--a New Yorker who was then
ambassador to France named Robert R. Livingston
--who arranged for a 20 year monopoly on steam boat service on the
Hudson
- Fulton's talent was particularly for putting
the parts together effectively. He used a Watt steam engine which
he modified and a paddlewheel.
- Unlike earlier engineers he calculated the
dimensions needed rather than determining them by trial and error, but
he didn't use much basic science (see Billington pp. 52-3)
- he was successful on the Hudson River
starting in with the Clermont (
image ) in 1807 but his boats encountered many
problems on the Mississippi
Oliver
Evans (1755-1819)
- designed mills
- one of the first builders of high-pressure
steam engines
- these were used in several boats but there
was a lot of controversy over the dangers--if the boilers exploded
people got killed
Sultana
Disaster
Henry
Miller Shreve (1785-
- started working on Mississippi river
flatboats
at age 17 and became a successful merchant
- when he saw Fulton's steamboat he realized
it
was the next big thing, but he also realized the importance of a
flat-bottom design for the Mississippi
- designed larger boats with high-pressure
engines
- Also worked to improve the river.
"Shreve began drawing up plans for a '
snag boat ' by 1821. The end result was a steamboat with a jaw-like
bow that pulled up snags, or tree trunks, and put them through a
sawmill on the deck. These boats were quickly employed to clear the
rivers, making navigation vastly safer and more economical." (
source)
Shreve's 1824 George Washington
Three different sources of technological
innovation
- applied science
- Watt used theory of specific heats, tested
a model to see where steam was going
- Water power engineer James Francis
did scientific research on performance of turbines
- Fulton used calculations based on science
to understand what performance he could expect but used off-the-shelf
components
- reponse to political and economic forces
- Watt--his partner Boulton told him what he
had
to do for the business to succeed
- Francis was in a situation in Lowell where
they needed to figure out how to use water power more efficiently and
arguing about
fair distribution of power
- Fulton is in competition with other
inventors, thinking from the start about how to make money
- result of individual genius
- Watt--control, looking for places to
improve a
basic idea
- Francis--likes scientific research
- Fulton--thinking visually, able to
visualize machines
this page written and copyright © Pamela E. Mack
History
323
last updated 1/21/2005