In his comparatively impoverished condition it was found
necessary to do something for the inventor. The Civil Engineers,
with Robert Stephenson, M.P., in the chair, entertained him at a
dinner and presented him with a handsome salver and claret jug.
And that he might have something to put upon his salver and into
his claret jug, a number of his friends and admirers subscribed
over 2000L. as a testimonial. The Government appointed him
Curator of the Patent Museum at South Kensington; the Queen
granted him a pension on the Civil List for 200L. a year; he was
raised to the honour of knighthood in l87l, and three years later
he died.
Francis Pettit Smith was not a great inventor. He had, like many
others, invented a screw propeller. But, while those others had
given up the idea of prosecuting it to its completion, Smith
stuck to his invention with determined tenacity, and never let it
go until he had secured for it a complete triumph. As Mr.
Stephenson observed at the engineer's meeting: "Mr. Smith had
worked from a platform which might have been raised by others, as
Watt had done, and as other great men had done; but he had made a
stride in advance which was almost tantamount to a new invention.
It was impossible to overrate the advantages which this and other
countries had derived from his untiring and devoted patience in
prosecuting the invention to a successful issue.
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