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.
Ob River
Tyumen had its first steamboat in 1836, and steamboats have navigated the middle reaches of the Ob since 1845. The first steamboat on the Ob, Nikita Myasnikov's "Osnova", was launched in 1844; the early starts were difficult, and it was not until 1857 that steamboat shipping started developing in the Ob system in a serious way. Steamboats started operating on the Yenisei in 1863, on the Lena and Amur in the 1870s. 
In 1916 there were 49 steamers on the Ob; 10 on the Yenisei.