(Thematic - Technology) "Honor To Whom Honor Is Due". Origin Of Steam Navigation...

(Thematic - Technology) "Honor To Whom Honor Is Due". Origin Of Steam Navigation. A view of Collect Pond and its Vicinity in the City of New York in 1793..., Hutchings, 1846 
    It wasn't Robert Fulton. He didn't invent steamboats.
    Here Mr. Hutchings proves, even getting signed witness testimony, and a map showing where it took place, that he and Mr Fitch had done it decades prior. Matter of fact, Mr. Hutchings steered the steamboat that Mr Fulton first experienced as a passenger. And in this print he tried to in a simple slogan rectify the error, by stating at bottom, "The World Is Indebted For The Original Idea And To The Mechanical Genius of John Fitch, Of East Windsor, Conn."
    Too often an individual is celebrated with a simple story of heroic individual accomplishment, when actually, it's often a community or lineage of work that did it. That person might have partially carried the baton of a great idea, but they weren't just standing on the shoulders of giants, they were primed by a context and happened into a level of success. It must sting tremendously to see the momentum of consensus get something so wrong, even after being corrected, but the populations is still enamored with a simple charming distorted story, rather than a more complex dependable truth.  d
    Condition is very good with one old repaired opening tear, and some light offsetting and foxing. Image size is approximately 14.5 x 18.5 (inches)