"Robert Fulton: Between Art and Engineering"

1786年，21岁的罗伯特·富尔顿去了英国，跟随当时最著名的美国艺术家本杰明·韦斯特学习艺术。在伦敦和韦斯特一起度过了相当成功的几年之后，富尔顿去了德文郡，受委托画了一系列肖像画，这标志着富尔顿实质性转变的开始。在英国中部旅行的六年里，他从艺术家变成了工程师，他在他的第一本出版物《运河航行改进论》（1796）中宣称自己是工程师。这个研究项目的目的是调查富尔顿的转变，了解为什么他放弃了一个有前途的职业生涯在艺术投入他的余生工程和发明，最终在他作为蒸汽船的发明者被广泛认可。自富尔顿于1815年去世以来，他的传记吸引了许多人的注意，但大多数传记都成了民族主义的牺牲品，这种民族主义常常笼罩着“英雄发明家”的故事。在讲述富尔顿的故事时，美国人一直是最孜孜不倦、最神圣化的，但他们的研究大多是在美国完成的，在欧洲做的就少得多，而富尔顿在欧洲待了近20年。欧洲人通常忽略了富尔顿，而支持他们自己的汽船发明者的头衔。这个研究项目背后的工作假设是，富尔顿在18世纪90年代中期在英国中部地区的经历是他职业和个人发展的形成时期，在这个时期，他接受了在英国工业革命中蓬勃发展的技术观点，也是他对世界的政治和意识形态观点开始发展的时候。这些因素和其他因素塑造了富尔顿后来非凡的职业生涯，只有对当地记录和文物的研究才能充分捕捉到他可能经历过的事情。研究结果可以揭示艺术和工程之间的持续关系，以及激励有创造力的人接受工程职业的动机。这项研究的结果最终将作为富尔顿完整传记的一部分发表。传记应该有广泛的吸引力，远远超出科学史学家的范围；艺术史学家、发明家、工程师、建筑师和其他人都应该对此非常感兴趣。

Robert Fulton went to England in 1786 at the age of twenty-one to study art with Benjamin West, the most famous American artist of the day. After several reasonably successful years with West in London, Fulton went to Devon to paint a series of commissioned portraits, and that marked the beginning of a substantial transformation for Fulton. In six years of traveling through the English midlands, he converted from artist to engineer, a title he claimed in his first publication, A Treatise on the Improvement of Canal Navigation (1796). The purpose of this research project is to investigate Fulton's conversion, to understand why he gave up a promising career in art to devote the rest of his life to engineering and invention, culminating in his widespread recognition as the inventor of the steamboat.Fulton has attracted many biographies since his death in 1815, but most fall victim to the nationalism that so often engulfs the stories of "heroic inventors." Americans have been most assiduous and hagiographic in telling Fulton's story, but they have done most of their research in the United States and much less in Europe, where Fulton had spent almost two decades. Europeans have generally neglected Fulton in favor of their own claimants for the title of inventor of the steamboat. The working hypothesis behind this research project is that Fulton's experience in the English midlands in the mid-1790s was the formative period in his professional and personal development, the time when he embraced a view of technology that was flourishing in the British Industrial Revolution and also when his political and ideological views of the world began to develop. These factors and others shaped the rest of Fulton's remarkable career, and only research in local records and artifacts can fully capture what he might have experienced. The results can shed light on the continuing relationship between art and engineering and the motivations that spur creative people to embrace engineering careers.The results of this research will eventually be published as part of a full length biography of Fulton. The biography should have broad appeal well beyond historians of science; it should be of substantial interest to art historians, inventors, engineers, architects, and others.