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Ask almost anyone who Robert Fulton was, and the most common (if not entirely accurate) answer you’ll get is, “inventor of the steamboat.” Fulton was born in Pennsylvania in 1765. As a young man he studied portraiture and landscape painting in Europe. He also studied French, German, chemistry and mathematics. While abroad, he became fascinated with canal construction and with shipbuilding – underwater shipbuilding. In 1804 he tested the first successful submarine which he’d built for the British Navy. The following year, after the Battle of Trafalgar, England lost interest in Fulton and he returned to the Americas. On February 11, 1809, Fulton patented an efficient, reliable ship that used a special British steam engine. His wasn’t the first steamboat patent by a long shot. Like Henry Ford, Fulton’s genius was not invention, but adapting inventions to fit the marketplace. He didn’t give us the steamboat; he made steam travel a reality.