Note Return to text — PART I.

In the month of June, 1776, a young man, the Marquis de Jouffroy, was experimenting upon the Doubs,1 with a steamboat forty feet long by six feet wide. For two years he had been inviting scientific attention to his invention; for two years he had insisted that steam was a powerful force, heretofore unappreciated. All ears remained deaf to his voice. Complete isolation was his sole recompense. When he walked through the streets of Beaume-les-Dames, a thousand jests greeted his appearance. They nicknamed him Jouffroy the Pump. Ten years later, having constructed a pyroscaphe [steamboat] which voyaged along the Saone, from Lyons to Isle Barbe, Jouffroy presented a petition to Cabinet Minister Calonne and to the Academy of Sciences. They refused even to look at his invention.