When Robert Fulton built his steamboat, he was merely bringing to a climax a long career of craftsmanship. That career started in the gunsmith's shop in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1773. He was only eight years old when he made an iron candlestick for his mother. He liked the busy, noisy gunsmith's shop, and spent much of his spare time there. He helped the gunsmith by working the bellows, and by turning the crank that lifted a huge ox in a sling so that he might be shod. In various ways Bob learned more and more about combining handiwork and brainwork and the fine results he might gain from this.

  Young Bob spent most of his time thinking up ways to make things or to improve things already made. Any obstacle to making something he wanted was a just a challenge to be met—a chance to put his cleverness to work and figure out a solution. And invariably he got the right answer.

  He liked to draw too. When charcoal did not make lines fine enough to show the intricate mechanism of a gun he was drawing, he set out to find a way to draw lines that were fine enough. His success in making a pencil very nearly got him into trouble with the stern Quaker schoolmaster.

  But the event of his boyhood that predicted the feat for which he would become famous the world over was the fishing trip with Deter Gumpf and his son Chris. The sun was hot, the mosquitoes were biting their worst, and it was a long way to the fishing spot. Someone must pole the boat, and Bob had to do his share of the tiring work. As he poled, he kept thinking that there must be an easier way to move a boat along, some way that would not be so hard and yet would get the boat there. He pricked up his ears when Deter mentioned that a gunsmith he knew had experimented with a new kind of paddle for a boat. That was it! He could hardly wait to get home and try making one for himself. . . .

  When the Clermont made its first successful trip from New York to Albany, the townspeople who had known Bob as a boy gathered in the gunsmith's shop. They were immensely proud of him, and not surprised at his fame. They remembered him as a youngster who had ideas, and who was never happy unless he was turning ideas into useful things. Now all the world would hear of him, and would profit from his craftsmanship.

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  Marquerite Henry is a newcomer to the list of the Childhood of Famous Americans Series, but she is not a newcomer to juvenile writing. Having more than a score of children's books and short stories to her credit, she brings to her contribution a practiced hand and a skillful pen. She has presented Robert Fulton in the same delightfully entertaining and informative way that twenty-three other famous Americans have been presented in this series. Now the boy Bob will be an old friend to children when they come to read about the great man Robert who made the first practical steamboat.

From the dust jacket