Colonel Robert Livingston Stevens was an American inventor and steamship builder, who served as president of the Camden and Amboy Railroad in the 1830s and 1840s.
Background
Robert was born on October 18, 1787 on his father's estate, "Castle Point, " Hoboken, New Jersey, United States. He was the second son of John and Rachel (Cox) Stevens. His paternal grandparents were John Stevens Jr. , a prominent New Jersey politician who served as a delegate to the Continental Congress, and Elizabeth (née Alexander) Stevens, who was the daughter of James Alexander, the Attorney General of New Jersey, and Mary (née Spratt) Provoost Alexander, a prominent merchant.
Education
He was educated under private tutors and at the same time assisted his father in his experimental engineering work.
Career
His first undertaking being the operation in 1804 of the steamboat Little Juliana on its journeys back and forth across the Hudson. In 1808 he helped in the design and construction of the Phoenix, introducing her concave water lines, and was master, under Captain Moses Rogers, on her pioneer sea voyage from New York to Philadelphia in 1809.
For several years thereafter, with headquarters in Trenton, he managed the operation of the Phoenix, placed in service on the Delaware River and plying between Philadelphia and Trenton. While thus engaged, he helped his father build the ferryboat Juliana, which on October 11, 1811, went into regular service between New York and Hoboken, thus establishing the world's first steamferry system.
By this time he had become wholly engrossed in naval architecture and for the succeeding twenty-five years was widely recognized as a leader of that profession. He designed and had built upwards of twenty steamboats and ferries, incorporating in them his successive inventions. Among these were the method of installing knees of wood and iron inside the ship's frame; a "cam-board" cut-off for steam engines; and balanced poppet valves.
He replaced the old castiron walking beam with the wrought-iron skeleton type; shortened the length of the beam and added a wooden gallows frame; and introduced a forced-draft firing system under boilers, the split paddle wheel, "hog-framing" for boats, and the present type of ferry slip.
He also increased the strength of steam boilers until pressures of fifty pounds per square inch could be safely carried, and was the first to perfect a marine tubular boiler. In addition to these activities he played an important part with his father and brothers in the cross-state transportation business, and upon the establishment, in 1830, of the Camden & Amboy Railroad & Transportation Company out of the Union Line (practically controlled by the Stevenses) Robert was elected president and chief engineer.
That same year he went to England to study English locomotives then in service or under construction, with a view to purchasing one and ordering iron rails. On the way he designed the T-rail (the standard section on all American railroads), which, after much difficulty, he succeeded in having rolled in England. He designed at the same time the "hook-headed spike" (substantially the railroad spike of today), and the "iron tongue" (now the fish plate), as well as the bolts and nut to complete a rail joint.
He purchased the locomotive John Bull, which on its trial trip at Bordentown, New Jersey, November 12, 1831, with Stevens at the throttle, inaugurated the first steam railway service in New Jersey.
He also designed the earliest locomotive pilot. During the succeeding fifteen years he divided his time between railroading and steam navigation. In the company's railroad shops in Hoboken he devised a double-slide cut-off for locomotives, designed and built several types of locomotives, improved boilers, and successfully burned anthracite coal under boilers.
Toward the close of the War of 1812, Stevens had perfected for naval use a bomb that could be fired from a cannon. He invented, too, an elongated percussion shell and sold large quantities to the federal government as well as the secret of its construction. This work led Stevens, his father, and brothers to give their attention to the introduction of armor on ships of war and brought into being plans for an unusual armored steamer for harbor defense, the design based upon extensive experiments which they had conducted. After submitting their plans to Congress they waited thirty years for authorization to construct a war steamer "shot and shell proof. "
Work was then started by Robert in a newly built drydock at Hoboken. Coincident with this undertaking began a great improvement in ordnance in all the principal navies of the world, and as Stevens had contracted to build "shot and shell proof, " he was compelled year after year to alter his plans, and before the vessel was finished he died.
Besides constructing steamboats he designed and built a number of sailing vessels, the most famous of which was the yacht Maria (1850), the fastest sailing vessel of her day. It was this yacht that defeated the America, a few months before the latter won the memorable race in England. Stevens lived practically the whole of his life in Hoboken and New York, entering into the social activities of the metropolis and being prominent in musical circles.
Stevens died in Hoboken on April 20, 1856.