Pyroscaphe (first working steamboat)
Pyroscaphe (primer barco de vapor funcional)
- Date
- 1783 · confidence high
- Place
- Saône River, Lyon, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France
- Credited to
- Claude de Jouffroy d'Abbans
- Field
- Movement
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A 46 m boat with a single-acting steam engine driving paddle wheels that went upstream on the Saône for fifteen minutes in July 1783. It was the first steamboat to work for a sustained period, though without commercial follow-up.
Denis Papin tested a steam-driven boat in 1707 and Jouffroy built the Palmipède in 1776; John Fitch launched another in 1787 on the Delaware. The Pyroscaphe is the first reliable, documented one.
What it led to
- Fulton's and Symington's steamboats
- 19th-century river steam navigation
- the shift from animal power and wind to steam