Home > Development of the Industrial U.S. > John Fitch Biography

Born January 21, 1743 (Windsor Township, Connecticut)

Died July 2, 1798 (Kentucky)

Inventor

Entrepreneur

In 1787 American inventor John Fitch built the world's first working steamboat. He demonstrated the vessel on the Delaware River in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for a panel of prominent politicians who were meeting in the city to take part in the Constitutional Convention, the meeting of delegates to draft the U.S. Constitution. Fitch's boat was moved by steam-powered oars, and he became involved in a bitter rivalry with an inventor from Virginia who had also constructed a steam-propelled vessel around the same time. Neither boat was a financial success, however, and Fitch died in poverty. It took twenty years and the achievement of Robert Fulton (1765-1815) to launch the age of steam travel in America.