Background
Hulls was born at Hanging Aston, Gloucestershire.
Hulls was born at Hanging Aston, Gloucestershire.
Traditionally he was recognised as the first person to make practical experiments with steam to propel a vessel. But evidence to substantiate the claim that he did more than propose a steam vessel on paper is lacking. lieutenant has been suggested that the background to the efforts of Hulls was the 1734 publication in the abridged Philosophical Transactions of a paper by the French engineer Monsieur Duquet on ships and mechanical propulsion.
Duquet was a controversialist also active at that time in a debate on his ideas with Henri Pitot.
He died in the middle of 1758 in Broad Campden, where he had lived almost all his adult life. Augustus De Morgan says that Hulls"s work very likely gave suggestions to William Symington.
And that Erasmus Darwin was thinking of Hulls when he prophesied that steam would soon "drag the slow barge".