1802, drew up an agreement to construct a steamboat to ply
between New York and Albany. Livingston agreed to advance five
hundred dollars for experimentation in Europe. In this same year
Fulton built a model and tested different means of propulsion,
giving "the preference to a wheel on each side of the model."*
The boat was built on the Seine, but proved too frail for the
borrowed engine. A second boat was tried in August, 1803, and
moved, though at a disappointingly slow rate of speed.

* Fulton to Barlow, quoted in Sutcliffe, "Robert Fulton and the
Clermont", p. 124.


Just at this time Fulton wrote ordering an engine from Boulton
and Watt to be transported to America. The order was at first
refused, as it was then the shortsighted policy of the British
Government to maintain a monopoly of mechanical contrivances.
Permission to export was given the next year, however, and the
engine was shipped in 1805. It lay for some time in the New York
Customs House. Meanwhile Fulton had studied the Watt engine on
Symington's steamboat, the Charlotte Dundas, on the Forth and
Clyde Canal, and Livingston had been granted a renewal of his
monopoly of the waters of New York.

Fulton arrived at New York in 1806 and began the construction of
the Clermont, so named after Livingston's estate on the Hudson.
The building was done on the East River. The boat excited the
jeers of passersby, who called it "Fulton's Folly." On Monday,
August 17, 1807, the memorable first voyage was begun. Carrying a
party of invited guests, the Clermont steamed off at one o'clock.