Robert Fulton
The first successful trial run of a steamboat had been made several years earlier in the United States by inventor John Fitch, on the Delaware River on August 22, 1787. Attendees included delegates from the Constitutional Convention, who were observing while taking a break from their summer-long sessions at Independence Hall. The steamboat was propelled by a bank of oars on either side of the boat. The following year Fitch launched a boat powered by a steam engine driving several stern-mounted oars. These oars paddled in a manner similar to the motion of a swimming duck's feet. With this boat he carried up to thirty passengers for hire on numerous round-trip voyages on the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Burlington, New Jersey.
Experiment (horse-powered boat)
"Experiment" was a horse-powered ferry boat. It was a 12-ton, three-masted boat drawing a few feet of water, about long by beam. Its driving mechanism was an in-water screw invented by David Grieve in 1801. The boat was constructed by David Wilkinson (some sources give his name as "Varnum") in 1807 to 1810, depending on the source. It was propelled by a "goose-foot paddle," a large mechanical screw propeller in the water instead of a paddle wheel at water surface. The new technology devised by Grieve and Wilkinson was powered by eight horses on a treadmill. The technology to propel the boat upstream was originally invented by David Grieve and granted a patent February 24, 1801 in the category of "Boats to ascend rivers". The complete recorded patent was lost in the 1836 U.S. Patent Office fire. The idea of propelling vessels by a mechanical screw in the water is now referred to as Ericsson's propeller.