Samuel was educated in the public school of Orford, and during his youth developed considerable mechanical ability and an intense interest in natural philosophy.
As early as 1780 he began devoting his leisure hours to experimentation with heat and light, and in the course of ten years acquired considerable knowledge of general chemistry and of the properties of steam.
Two years later, Mar. 25, 1795, he patented a rotary steam-engine.
Patents were also issued to him for a windmill, a water-wheel, and a steam pump.
Meanwhile, about 1790, he began his experiments with steamboats, and after three years of work devised a small craft equipped with a steam-engine mounted on the bow, which he operated on the Connecticut River at Orford.
In 1794 he is said to have built a stern-wheel steamboat and to have run it from Hartford, Connecticut, to New York.
Preble (post) says that this was the sixth steamboat built in the United States.
He was not successful, however, and always claimed that his steamboat ideas were stolen by Fulton.
He obtained two patents for steam-engine improvements in 1803 and 1815, respectively, and on Apr. 1, 1826, one of the first American patents for an internal combustion engine.
Morey contributed to Silliman's American Journal of Science and Arts a number of articles bearing on his work.
[G. H. Preble, A Chronological Hist.
of the Origin and Development of Steam Navigation (1883); W. A. Mowry, "Who Invented the American Steamboat?
, " Colls.
N. H. Antiquarian Soc. , no.
I (1874); Gabriel Farrell, Jr. , Capt. Samuel Morey (1915); Am.
Jour.
of Science and Arts, vol.
I (1819), II (1820), XI (1826); Centennial Celebration of the Town of Orford, N. H. , 1865 (n. d. ); A List of Patents Granted by the U. S. from Apr. 10, 1790, to Dec. 31, 1836 (1872). ]
Presumably Morey had been working on this invention for a number of years, for about 1820 he constructed a boat called Aunt Sally, and propelled it by a vapor engine on Fairlee Pond, now Lake Morey, at Fairlee, Vt.
Morey, Samuel, (Oct. 23, 1762 - Apr. 17, 1843), Connecticut 1762 1843 Male Inventor inventor, was born in Hebron, Connecticut, which was also the birthplace of his parents, Israel and Martha (Palmer) Morey.
He married Hannah Avery in Orford, and at his death in Fairlee, Vt., where he resided during the latter part of his life, he was survived by his widow and a daughter.
He married Hannah Avery in Orford, and at his death in Fairlee, Vt., where he resided during the latter part of his life, he was survived by his widow and a daughter.
