The Merchants of Death - Ludwig von Mises Institute

MERCHANTS IN SWADDLING CLOTHES 19
Directory, were inclined to favor it.
Limited funds were advanced to Fulton and trials took
place. The Nautilus was a crude apparatus, submerging byadmitting
water to the hold and rising by pumping it out,
but the tests were quite successful. At one time a contract
was drawn up, which curiously enough had a most patriotic
clause inserted at the request of the inventor, providing
that the Nautilus should not be used against the United
States unless the latter used it first against France. But in
the end French naval conservatism and red tape triumphed.
Fulton's proposals were rejected and he went to France's
adversary, England, to market his product. He found the
English admirals just as conservative and contemptuous of
his craft and after discouraging negotiations he abandoned
the enterprise and set sail for New York. 3
Fulton's ship was hardly out of sight of Land's End when
another inventor knocked on the door of English conservatism.
Up in Scotland a Scotch minister named Alexander
Forsyth liked fowling but found his flintlock gun a most unsatisfactory
affair. On his hunting expeditions across the
moors, he was enraged when the powder and ball often failed
to explode just after he had drawn a good bead on a fat
pheasant. He had a turn for tinkering with mechanical contrivances
and he began to experiment with methods of ignition.
The result was a form of the percussion cap, inserted
in a pan on the breech of the gun. It was crude, but it was
at least successful in withstanding the damp mists of the
Scottish highlands.
Forsyth saw commercial possibilities in it and went to
London to get a patent. There he met Lord Moira, head of