Daniel Dod was an American inventor and steam-engine builder who invented the steamboat Savannah, which crossed the Atlantic Ocean.
Background
Daniel Dod was born on September 8, 1778 in northern Virginia, United States. He was of the fourth generation descended from Daniel and Mary Dod, natives of England, who emigrated to Branford, Connecticut, about 1645. His parents were Lebbeus, a brother of Thaddeus Dod, and Mary (Baldwin) Dod. His father had removed from New Jersey to establish himself as a maker of clocks and watches, but on account of Indian troubles the latter returned north with his family and settled in Mendham, before the close of the Revolution, Young Dod was trained by his father for the business of clock and watchmaking, mathematical instrument making and surveying.
Education
Dod attended the public schools and also Queen’s (now Rutgers) College at New Brunswick.
Career
About the time that Dod became of age, with his two older brothers, he started a manufactory of cotton machinery which developed nicely but failed in the depression following the War of 1812. Just prior to this he had declined the chair of mathematics at Rutgers, and with the collapse of the cotton machinery business he removed with his family to Elizabethtown.
For some time he had been interested in steam-engine building, and on November 29, 1811, and May 12, 1812, he was granted United States patents on steam-engines, including boilers and condensers, for use in steamboats as well as mills. These engines operated on the general principle of the Watt engine. In Elizabethtown Dod entered into partnership with the former Governor, Aaron Ogden, who operated a ferry, to manufacture steam-engines and steamboat machinery. Armed with Dod’s patents and the manufacturing rights to John Fitch’s steamboat machinery which they had purchased, they began the manufacture of a steam ferryboat and their first product was put in service in 1813. Robert Fulton’s steamboat monopoly, which was then in force, prevented, however, Dod and Ogden from continuing to use steam in this ferry service. They continued for five years, making steamboat machinery for boats in other waters: on Lake Ontario; in Philadelphia, Norfolk, Mobile, and New Orleans.
In 1818 Dod and Ogden dissolved partnership, Dod retaining the manufacturing plant. As a friend he indorsed notes for Ogden who was in need of working capital for his ferry system. Ogden failed, and Dod’s works were seized under a mortgage, which loss, together with those on the Savannah, forced him in 1819 to pass over all of his property to his creditors. With the help of friends he repurchased all of his tools and in 1820 set up business anew in New York. Three years later, while examining his machinery on board the steamboat Patent in the East River, he was so injured by the explosion of the boiler that he died several days later at the age of forty-five.
Achievements
Dod’s greatest contribution was the machinery for the steamboat Savannah, which crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1819—the first steam-vessel to make this voyage.
Connections
In 1801 Dod married Nancy Squier of Caldwell, New Jersey, who with three daughters and five sons, among them Albert Baldwin Dod, survived him.
