The first steamboat patentee. The first edition of Jonathan Hulls' (d.1758) pamphlet advertising his pioneering work on steamboats. An unsophisticated copy with charming pen trials and a small drawing of a man on the binding, and a face in profile on the front free endpaper.

Inventor Jonathan Hull 'inherited mechanical skills from his weaver father and displayed a youthful aptitude for repairing neighbours' clocks. He attended Campden grammar school, earning a reputation as a diligent mathematician and skilled technician' and 'is remembered principally for having patented the application of the atmospheric steam engine to marine propulsion. A communication from M. de Quet on mechanical propulsion of ships, published in 1734 in volume 6 of the abridgement of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, may have spurred Hulls to attempt to apply the Newcomen engine for this purpose' (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).

Hull was granted a patent on 21st December 1736, printed in full at the beginning of the text, which recognised that 'he hath with much labour and study, and at great expense, invented and formed a Machine, for carrying ships and vessels out from or into any harbour or river, against wind and tide, or in a calm'. He had invented, what was in effect, the first steam-powered tugboat.

The machine was to work by harnessing atmospheric pressure: condensed steam would depress pistons connected through a series of ropes and pulleys to a layshaft, a rising counterweight would then reverse the rotation allowing fresh steam to be admitted below the piston. Friction ratchets converted this alternating motion into a continuous rotating force which drove a paddlewheel at the stern of the vessel. Unfortunately, it seems that Hulls' invention never reached open-water trials, although apocryphal tradition states he experimented with his machine on a stretch of the Avon outside of Evesham.

Illustrated with a large folding plate showing the hypothetical machine in full effect, with individual figures of the component parts.

First edition; 12mo (17.5 x 10 cm); engraved folding plate (17 x 37.5 cm), woodcut initials, head and tailpiece, contemporary ink illustration to front free endpaper, pen trials to front free endpaper and verso of folding plate; contemporary vellum, MS pen trials to covers, small split to upper cover; 48pp.

ESTC T121934.