Steamboats also played a vital role in the transportation revolution. Steamboats revolutionized water travel. The first practical steamboat, the Clermont, was made by Robert Fulton in 1807 and began sailing from New York. Steamboats enabled people and goods to be easily transported up and downriver. Steamboats contributed to the transportation revolution because they created a new and easy way to travel by water and also decreased costs and transportation time of goods from one place to another. Steamboats opened the nation's river system to inexpensive upriver travel and also accelerated trade on the Ohio river, Mississippi River and its tributaries.
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