Early attempts at powering a boat by steam were made by the French inventor Dennis Papin and English inventor Thomas Newcomen Papin. They invented a type of pressure cooker and experimented with closed cylinders and small pistons pushed in by atmospheric pressure. Papin proposed that applying this steam mechanism to a paddlewheel boat would make it move without having to use the paddle-wheels. This idea was unsuccessful; until in 1783 when French engineer Marquis Claude de Jouffroy and his colleagues added an improvement to the earlier engine. Before we jump to far ahead we will go to when the steam engine came to America in 1787, when he made the first successful trial of a 45 foot steamboat on the Delaware River.