Belching black smoke from twin stacks, Robert Fulton's revolutionary sidewheel steamboat Clermont churns up the Hudson River in 1807 as astonished figures on the rocky shore raise their arms in wonder — a romanticized chromolithographic scene that captures the mythologized moment when steam power transformed American commerce and travel forever, reproduced here as an early undivided-back-era postcard mailed from Worcester, Massachusetts on August 17, 1916. An oval portrait inset at lower right shows Fulton himself in period dress — the inventor-entrepreneur whose North River Steamboat (popularly called the Clermont) completed the 150-mile voyage from New York City to Albany in 32 hours, proving the commercial viability of steam navigation. The card is postmarked Worcester, Mass., Aug 17, 1:30 PM, 1916 — a wartime summer mailing — and the printed stamp box notes the period domestic rate of one cent, foreign two cents, placing its printing squarely in the 1907–1916 window. The image itself reproduces a well-known 19th-century painting of the scene, making this a layered historical artifact: a postcard depicting a painting depicting a history-making voyage.