Fulton, an American engineer and painter, built the boat with the backing of Robert Livingston, a former diplomat who held a monopoly on steam navigation in New York waters. Spectators who called it "Fulton's Folly" watched it chug upriver at about five miles per hour. The trip of about 150 miles took 32 hours, with an overnight stop at Livingston's estate, Clermont, a name later attached to the boat. Regular passenger service followed within weeks and transformed travel in America.
Steam-powered boats had been tried before, notably by John Fitch on the Delaware River in the 1780s, but none had made money. Fulton had studied the problem in France, where he met Livingston, then the American minister in Paris, and tested a boat on the Seine in 1803. He then imported a Boulton and Watt steam engine from England and had a hull built in New York.
The boat was about 140 feet long and narrow, with paddle wheels on either side. On August 17, 1807, it left a dock in lower Manhattan with invited guests aboard. Sailing sloops normally took several days to reach Albany, depending on the wind. Fulton's boat reached Livingston's estate at Clermont in about 24 hours, stayed the night and arrived at Albany the next day. Fulton wrote to a friend that he had passed many sloops and schooners "as if they had been at anchor".
Within weeks the boat began carrying paying passengers. Its success made river travel faster and more predictable, and steamboats soon opened the Mississippi and Ohio rivers to commerce.
Key people: Robert Fulton, Robert R. Livingston