What is the correct order of ideas from earliest to latest?
In 1786 the American inventor John Fitch began operating a steamship on the Delaware River, but his venture failed financially and it wasn't for several years that another American, Robert Fulton, launched the first successful steamship, the Clermont, running between Albany and New York. Between these two nautical milestones a Cornish inventor, Richard Trevithick, built a steam locomotive that pulled a coal train, but it was too expensive to operate and not commercially successful. The first commercially successful locomotive was built by George Stephenson before a ship called the Royal William crossed the ocean for the first time entirely by steam, but after the Clermont was already operating. Steam-propelled vehicles can be traced back to Fernand Verbiest, who built a toy cart with a steam turbine. And about 100 years later, but still before Fitch's steamship, a French inventor, Nicholas Cugnot, ran a steam locomotive on the road.
a. Cugnot, Fitch, Verbiest, Trevithick, Fulton
b. Fulton, Fitch, Verbiest, Trevithick, Cugnot
c. Verbiest, Fitch, Trevithick, Fulton, Cugnot
d. Verbiest, Cugnot, Fitch, Trevithick, Fulton
