What was the wonder of yesterday, becomes the common and unnoticed thing of to-day.
The first idea of the screw was thrown out by James Watt more than a century ago.

Matthew Boulton, of Birmingham, had proposed to move canal boats by means of the steam-engine; and Dr.Small, his friend, was in communication with James Watt, then residing at Glasgow, on the subject.

In a letter from Watt to Small, dated the 30th September, 1770, the former, after speaking of the condenser, and saying that it cannot be dispensed with, proceeds: "Have you ever considered a spiral oar for that purpose [propulsion of canal boats], or are you for two wheels ?" Watt added a pen-and-ink drawing of his spiral oar, greatly resembling the form of screw afterwards patented.

Nothing, however, was actually done, and the idea slept.
It was revived again in 1785, by Joseph Bramah, a wonderful projector and inventor.[5] He took out a patent, which included a rotatory steam-engine, and a mode of propelling vessels by means either of a paddle-wheel or a "screw propeller." This propeller was "similar to the fly of a smoke-jack"; but there is no account of Bramah having practically tried this method of propulsion.
Austria, also, claims the honour of the invention of the screw steamer.
At Trieste and Vienna are statues erected to Joseph Ressel, on whose behalf his countrymen lay claim to the invention; and patents for some sort of a screw date back as far as 1794.
Patents were also taken out in England and America--by W.Lyttleton in 1794; by E.Shorter in 1799; by J.C.Stevens, of New Jersey, in 1804; by Henry James in 1811--but nothing practical was accomplished.
Richard Trevethick, the anticipator of many things, also took out a patent in 1815, and in it he describes the screw propeller with considerable minuteness.

Millington, Whytock, Perkins, Marestier, and Brown followed, with no better results.
The late Dr.Birkbeck, in a letter addressed to the 'Mechanics' Register,' in the year 1824, claimed that John Swan, of 82, Mansfield Street, Kingsland Road, London, was the practical inventor of the screw propeller.