Topic starter
21/12/2010 5:06 pm
We've had a lot of discussion about the first steamboats, but there has been no talk about the origins of the paddlewheel. Before Fulton put steam engines on a boat, he had to have known of a way to transfer steam power into propulsion. When the NEW ORLEANS came from Pittsburgh to Louisville, it averaged 8 mph which indicates to me that the boat must have had fairly effecient paddlewheels...they pushed the boat well and did not shake the boat apart. Where did the design of the paddlewheels come from?
21/12/2010 6:36 pm
Reaching back into a very cob-webbed area of my mind, I seem to recall Leonardo Da Vinci was the brains behind marine paddlewheel propulsion. Then in 1807 Robert Fulton paired the paddlewheel with steam machinery and built the first economically successful steamboat. Before Fulton, James Rumsey, John Fitch, et. al. used other propulsion devices, and not a paddlewheel, on their steamboats.
21/12/2010 7:58 pm
Frank: Cobwebs or no, I think that you are correct. Leonardo. Fitch used paddles with a lot of gearing/cams etc to make them dip and trust.retract and return. Rumsey, and Ben Franklin, were proponants of pumps...in up front; out the back jets, The both worked but Fitch's worked better and faster...with the equipment of the day. Fitch even had SCHEDULED service in place in the summer of 1790 methinks! Long before Fulton. I think that Fitch's design was about as fast as Fulton's but keeping all those gears and cams in working order must have been a chore! I think that it was Nicholas Roosevelt who talked Fulton (his partner) into using the paddle wheel for which I think he (Roosevelt) had the patent. Rumsey had a boat that used the force of the current to actuate poles against the bottom to go against the current but it MUST have be slow bell. Propellers were used very early by Stevens in ferry service just about as early as Fulton, albeit in deep water service. Without a Kort nozzle the propeller was not good in shallow water. Don't think anything beats a paddle wheel in realy shallow water. Cap'n Walnut
22/12/2010 3:50 pm
You could also defer to the water wheel which produced power in and of itself, with a little help from a moving stream, for who knows how long. Is there anything Leonardo did not invent?
22/12/2010 9:48 pm
*RE: Ancient water wheels/paddlewheels*
Hi, Lexie & steamboating colleagues:
Great thread above with insights from Frank, Tom, Lexie as per Jim's question. The water wheels Lexie mentioned go back to the earliest of ancient times on the Nile, Tigrus/Euphrates etc. as means to scoop/direct water back from rivers/irrigation canals to fields. This wheel termed a 'saquia' [Spelling varies'] had paddles or large clay pots to also lift water. The 'shadoof' was a kind of balanced counter weight with big jugs to lift water up and dumped into small canals. You still see these in use along the Nile in small provincial villages. In classic times there is a reference to a Roman craft used to ferry soldiers and horses across bays and estuaries. By the Middle Ages an illuminated painting appeared in a book similar to 'The Book of Hours' with a 'version' of this paddlewheel vessel like a sidewheeler cranked my soldiers, naturally.
Leonard had many brilliant ideas that couldn't be realized due to the still flagging technology and materials he, and others, had at hand along with needed power sources. Power until the Industrial Revolution/advent of steam was natural: wind, flowing water, animals and human muscles, springs or tightly wound ropes or windlass. The archer's bow is a kind of machine usung power of arm, wood and strung gut or fiber. You rode an animal, walked, paddled or sailed with the wind. If you want a good read pull the book 'By Light of Fire' the history of darkness and coming of light by artificial sources. Well, what do I know?
R. Dale Flick
Coal Haven Landing, Ohio River, Cincinnati.
22/12/2010 10:25 pm
James Flexner learned about an ox-powered, six-paddlewheel boat in the six century AD.
In 1736 Jonathan Hulls patented a steamboat using a Newcomen engine. Nobody knows if he built it. It was intended to pull barges on canals in England.
Paddlewheels were used in ancent times to run mills. Just who thought of reversing the power is unknown, i. e. using the paddlewheel to drive against the water as opposed to accepting power from the current.
23/12/2010 12:14 pm
Paddlewheels are reasonably efficient for propellimg boats. Their main drawback was excessive weight. Some advantages include ease of repair, the same efficiency in both directions, location above the hull bottom and instant response.
Topic starter
23/12/2010 2:24 pm
One of the reasons I asked this question is because, in doing some research on the NEW ORLEANS trip down the river, the newspapers of the day did not mention "a new propulsion system" or seem particularly interested in the paddlewheels...like paddlewheels were nothing new. If paddlewheels were not new, where were they used as propulsion devices prior to the invention of the steamboat?
When the Wright brothers were developing their airplane, they spent a lot of time and experiments on propeller design because not only did they have to invent an airplane they also had to invent an effecient way to propell it. Apparently, this was not so for Fulton and the steamboat.
23/12/2010 2:54 pm
Jim: Fulton HAD already used the paddle wheel on the Hudson River Clermont before the New Orleans was built...so it was not new to boats in 1811. Roosevelt was the one who suggested using it there...Fulton had favored another system...I forget which. Roosevelt was one of Fulton's partners well BEFORE the New Orleans...as was Livingston and Stevens. Fulton's partnership, with money, prestige, political clout and an inventive turn of mind (as had all his partners) was in a postiton to pick and choose what to use, and DID it. The embargo against exporting steam engines to the US that prevented Fitch and Rumsey from using state-of-the-art engines in their iterations of the steamboat had expired and Fulton USED IT. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were all involved in this little affair. In what I wrote on the 1811 subject I made it clear that we ALL, in whatever successes and innovations we acheive, did it and do it by standing solidly on the shoulders of those who came before us.
01/01/2011 4:02 pm
The paddlewheel
GREAT THREAD!
In my research on Robert Fulton's North River I came across many who actually preceded Fulton and the paddle wheel on boats. Fulton never "invented" the steamboat but incorporated ideas and designs of others in his first successful steamboat.
Di Vinci did, have a paddle wheel design but I doubt that he invented it. There are records that the Chinese used paddle wheel propulsion back in the 400's.
As has been mentioned, I suspect that paddle wheels evolved from the water wheel.
