The Smithsonian Institution at Washington, D.C., has on exhibit a
model of Samuel Morey's gas engine, the first internal combustion
engine ever constructed.
Morey lived on Orford's Ridge in the Historic District and conducted
his experiments in a workshop behind his house, now the site of a barn
built by Stedman Willard about 1840. Morey patented his gas, or
vapour, engine in 1826, more than half a century before the first
commercially successful automobile was produced by Charles E. Duryea
in 1891-1892. Morey's engine operated on the same principle as todays
automobiles. His carburetor, which he appropriately called his
preparing box, mixed his vaporized fuel with air and prepared it for
ignition. Morey himself foresaw the value of his invention, though he
could not convince others of its worth. The engine, he stated, could
advantageously draw carriages on good roads and railways and give much
wanted direction and velocity to balloons.
In 1817, Morey patented his American Water Burner, a device for
making and burning water gas. Thus his house on the Ridge was heated
and lighted by water gas half a century before this gas was
successfully employed in America in 1875 for heating and illuminating
purposes. Morey foretold the use of central heating by suggesting that
heat from his gas stoves might be led by pipes or furnaces wherever
wanted. Morey patented twenty inventions over a period of forty years.
Although the internal combustion engine was his most extraordinary
achievement, he is better known for the first paddle wheel steamboat.
In 1793 Morey was the first to demonstrate the use of a paddle wheel
to propel a steamboat which he operated on the Connecticut River at
Orford. In 1797 he built a steamboat at Bordentown, New Jersey, using
two side paddle wheels, a method of propulsion that proved to be the
answer to successful steamboat navigation. Morey exhibited this boat
at Philadelphia. Chancellor Livingston of New York had been a
passenger on a stern paddle wheel steamboat Morey built and operated
on the Hudson River at New York in 1796 and had known of Morey's
subsequent side paddle wheel steamboat. However, when (Thomas)Fulton,
backed by Livingston, built his steamboat in 1807, he patented
the side paddle wheels as his own invention. In 1811, having been
told that the application of two wheels to a steamboat was Morey's
invention, Fulton took out another patent. Morey, in his patent of
1795 for a steam engine whose force could be communicated either by a
crank, or chain and wheels to propel boats, neglected to protect his
steam powered paddle wheels adequately.
The above is taken from files contained in the Orford Street Historic
District archives of Orford, New Hampshire, USA
I'm keen to see any images of Morey's first paddlewheelers if anyone
can loccate them
PJ
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