For the beginnings of the enslavement of steam, that mighty giant whose
work has changed the world we live in, we must return to the times of
Benjamin Franklin. James Watt, the accredited father of the modern steam
engine, was a contemporary of Franklin, and his engine was twenty-one
years old when Franklin died. The discovery that steam could be
harnessed and made to work is not, of course, credited to James Watt.
The precise origin of that discovery is unknown. The ancient Greeks had
steam engines of a sort, and steam engines of another sort were pumping
water out of mines in England when James Watt was born. James Watt,
however, invented and applied the first effective means by which steam
came to serve mankind. And so the modern steam engine begins with him.
The story is old, of how this Scottish boy, James Watt, sat on the
hearth in his mother's cottage, intently watching the steam rising
from the mouth of the tea kettle, and of the great role which this boy
afterwards assumed in the mechanical world. It was in 1763, when he was
twenty-eight and had the appointment of mathematical-instrument maker
to the University of Glasgow, that a model of Newcomen's steam pumping
engine was brought into his shop for repairs. One can perhaps imagine
the feelings with which James Watt, interested from his youth in
mechanical and scientific instruments, particularly those which dealt
with steam, regarded this Newcomen engine. Now his interest was
vastly quickened. He set up the model and operated it, noticed how
the alternate heating and cooling of its cylinder wasted power, and
concluded, after some weeks of experiment, that, in order to make the
engine practicable, the cylinder must be kept hot, "always as hot as the
steam which entered it." Yet in order to condense the steam there must
be a cooling of the vessel. The problem was to reconcile these two
conditions.
At length the pregnant idea occurred to him--the idea of the separate
condenser. It came to him on a Sunday afternoon in 1765, as he walked
across Glasgow Green. If the steam were condensed in a vessel separate
from the cylinder, it would be quite possible to keep the condensing
vessel cool and the cylinder hot at the same time. Next morning Watt
began to put his scheme to the test and found it practicable. He
developed other ideas and applied them. So at last was born a steam
engine that would work and multiply man's energies a thousandfold.
After one or two disastrous business experiences, such as fall to the
lot of many great inventors, perhaps to test their perseverance,
Watt associated himself with Matthew Boulton, a man of capital and of
enterprise, owner of the Soho Engineering Works, near Birmingham. The
firm of Boulton and Watt became famous, and James Watt lived till August
19, 1819--lived to see his steam engine the greatest single factor in
the new industrial era that had dawned for English-speaking folk.
Boulton and Watt, however, though they were the pioneers, were by no
means alone in the development of the steam engine. Soon there were
rivals in the field with new types of engines. One of these was Richard
Trevithick in England; another was Oliver Evans of Philadelphia. Both
Trevithick and Evans invented the high-pressure engine. Evans appears to
have applied the high pressure principle before Trevithick, and it has
been said that Trevithick borrowed it from Evans, but Evans himself
never said so, and it is more likely that each of these inventors worked
it out independently. Watt introduced his steam to the cylinder at only
slightly more than atmospheric pressure and clung tenaciously to the
low-pressure theory all his life. Boulton and Watt, indeed, aroused
by Trevithick's experiments in high-pressure engines, sought to have
Parliament pass an act forbidding high pressure on the ground that the
lives of the public were endangered. Watt lived long enough, however, to
see the high-pressure steam engine come into general favor, not only in
America but even in his own conservative country.
Less sudden, less dramatic, than that of the cotton gin, was the
entrance of the steam engine on the American industrial stage, but not
less momentous. The actions and reactions of steam in America provide
the theme for an Iliad which some American Homer may one day write. They
include the epic of the coal in the Pennsylvania hills, the epic of
the ore, the epic of the railroad, the epic of the great city; and, in
general, the subjugation of a continental wilderness to the service of a
vast civilization.
The vital need of better transportation was uppermost in the thoughts of
many Americans. It was seen that there could be no national unity in a
country so far flung without means of easy intercourse between one group
of Americans and another. The highroads of the new country were, for the
most part, difficult even for the man on horseback, and worse for those
who must travel by coach or post-chaise. Inland from the coast and
away from the great rivers there were no roads of any sort; nothing but
trails. Highways were essential, not only for the permanent unity of the
United States, but to make available the wonderful riches of the inland
country, across the Appalachian barrier and around the Great Lakes, into
which American pioneers had already made their way.
Those immemorial pathways, the great rivers, were the main avenues of
traffic with the interior. So, of course, when men thought of improving
transportation, they had in mind chiefly transportation by water; and
that is why the earliest efforts of American inventors were applied to
the means of improving traffic and travel by water and not by land.
The first men to spend their time in trying to apply steam power to the
propulsion of a boat were contemporaries of Benjamin Franklin. Those who
worked without Watt's engine could hardly succeed. One of the earliest
of these was William Henry of Pennsylvania. Henry, in 1763, had the idea
of applying power to paddle wheels, and constructed a boat, but his
boat sank, and no result followed, unless it may be that John Fitch and
Robert Fulton, both of whom were visitors at Henry's house, received
some suggestions from him. James Rumsey of Maryland began experiments
as early as 1774 and by 1786 had a boat that made four miles an hour
against the current of the Potomac.
The most interesting of these early and unsuccessful inventors is John
Fitch, who, was a Connecticut clockmaker living in Philadelphia. He was
eccentric and irregular in his habits and quite ignorant of the steam
engine. But he conceived the idea of a steamboat and set to work to make
one. The record of Fitch's life is something of a tragedy. At the best
he was an unhappy man and was always close to poverty. As a young man he
had left his family because of unhappy domestic relations with his wife.
One may find in the record of his undertakings which he left in the
Philadelphia Library, to be opened thirty years after its receipt,
these words: "I know of nothing so perplexing and vexatious to a man of
feelings as a turbulent Wife and Steamboat building." But in spite of
all his difficulties Fitch produced a steamboat, which plied regularly
on the Delaware for several years and carried passengers. "We reigned
Lord High Admirals of the Delaware; and no other boat in the River
could hold its way with us," he wrote. "Thus has been effected by
little Johnny Fitch and Harry Voight [one of his associates] one of the
greatest and most useful arts that has ever been introduced into the
world; and although the world and my country does not thank me for it,
yet it gives me heartfelt satisfaction." The "Lord High Admirals of the
Delaware," however, did not reign long. The steamboat needed improvement
to make it pay; its backers lost patience and faith, and the inventor
gave up the fight and retired into the fastnesses of the Kentucky
wilderness, where he died.
The next inventor to struggle with the problem of the steamboat, with
any approach to success, was John Stevens of Hoboken. His life was cast
in a vastly different environment from that of John Fitch. He was a rich
man, a man of family and of influence. His father's house--afterwards
his own---at 7 Broadway, facing Bowling Green--was one of the mansions
of early New York, and his own summer residence on Castle Point,
Hoboken, just across the Hudson, was one of the landmarks of the great
river. For many years John Stevens crossed that river; most often in an
open boat propelled by sail or by men at the oars. Being naturally of a
mechanical turn, he sought to make the crossing easier. To his library
were coming the prints that told of James Watt and the steam engine in
England, and John Fitch's boat had interested him.
Robert Fulton's Clermont, of which we shall speak presently, was
undoubtedly the pioneer of practicable steamboats. But the Phoenix,
built by John Stevens, followed close on the Clermont. And its engines
were built in America, while those of the Clermont had been imported
from England. Moreover, in June, 1808, the Phoenix stood to sea, and
made the first ocean voyage in the history of steam navigation. Because
of a monopoly of the Hudson, which the New York Legislature had granted
to Livingston and Fulton, Stevens was compelled to send his ship to the
Delaware. Hence the trip out into the waters of the Atlantic, a journey
that was not undertaken without trepidation. But, despite the fact that
a great storm arose, the Phoenix made the trip in safety; and continued
for many years thereafter to ply the Delaware between Philadelphia and
Trenton.
Robert Fulton, like many and many another great inventor, from Leonardo
da Vinci down to the present time, was also an artist. He was born
November 14, 1765, at Little Britain, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania,
of that stock which is so often miscalled "Scotch-Irish." He was only a
child when his father died, leaving behind him a son who seems to have
been much more interested in his own ideas than in his schoolbooks. Even
in his childhood Robert showed his mechanical ability. There was a firm
of noted gunsmiths in Lancaster, in whose shops he made himself at home
and became expert in the use of tools. At the age of fourteen he
applied his ingenuity to a heavy fishing boat and equipped it with
paddle-wheels, which were turned by a crank, thus greatly lightening the
labor of moving it.
At the age of seventeen young Fulton moved to Philadelphia and set up as
a portrait painter. Some of the miniatures which he painted at this
time are said to be very good. He worked hard, made many good friends,
including Benjamin Franklin, and succeeded financially. He determined
to go to Europe to study--if possible under his fellow Pennsylvanian,
Benjamin West, then rising into fame in London. The West and the Fulton
families had been intimate, and Fulton hoped that West would take him as
a pupil. First buying a farm for his mother with a part of his savings,
he sailed for England in 1786, with forty guineas in his pocket.
West received him not only as a pupil but as a guest in his house and
introduced him to many of his friends. Again Fulton succeeded, and in
1791 two of his portraits were exhibited at the Royal Academy, and the
Royal Society of British Artists hung four paintings by him.
Then came the commission which changed the course of Fulton's life.
His work had attracted the notice of Viscount Courtenay, later Earl
of Devon, and he was invited to Devonshire to paint that nobleman's
portrait. Here he met Francis, third Duke of Bridgewater, the father
of the English canal system, and his hardly less famous engineer, James
Brindley, and also Earl Stanhope, a restless, inquiring spirit. Fulton
the mechanic presently began to dominate Fulton the artist. He studied
canals, invented a means of sawing marble in the quarries, improved
the wheel for spinning flax, invented a machine for making rope, and a
method of raising canal boats by inclined planes instead of locks. What
money he made from these inventions we do not know, but somewhat later
(1796) he speaks hopefully of an improvement in tanning. This same year
he published a pamphlet entitled "A Treatise on the Improvement of
Canal Navigation", copies of which were sent to Napoleon and President
Washington.
Fulton went to France in 1797. To earn money he painted several
portraits and a panorama of the Burning of Moscow. This panorama,
covering the walls of a circular hall built especially for it, became
very popular, and Fulton painted another. In Paris he formed a warm
friendship with that singular American, Joel Barlow, soldier, poet,
speculator, and diplomatist, and his wife, and for seven years lived in
their house.
The long and complicated story of Fulton's sudden interest in torpedoes
and submarine boats, his dealings with the Directory and Napoleon and
with the British Admiralty does not belong here. His experiments and his
negotiations with the two Governments occupied the greater part of his
time for the years between 1797 and 1806. His expressed purpose was
to make an engine of war so terrible that war would automatically
be abolished. The world, however, was not ready for diving boats and
torpedoes, nor yet for the end of war, and his efforts had no tangible
results.*
* The submarine was the invention of David Bushnell, a
Connecticut Yankee, whose "American Turtle" blew up at least
one British vessel in the War of Independence and created
much consternation among the King's ships in American
waters.
During all the years after 1793, at least, and perhaps earlier, the idea
of the steamboat had seldom been out of his mind, but lack of funds and
the greater urgency, as he thought, of the submarine prevented him from
working seriously upon it. In 1801, however, Robert R. Livingston
came to France as American Minister. Livingston had already made some
unsuccessful experiments with the steamboat in the United States, and,
in 1798, had received the monopoly of steam navigation on the waters
of New York for twenty years, provided that he produced a vessel within
twelve months able to steam four miles an hour. This grant had, of
course, been forfeited, but might be renewed, Livingston thought.
Fulton and Livingston met, probably at Barlow's house, and, in 1802,
drew up an agreement to construct a steamboat to ply between New York
and Albany. Livingston agreed to advance five hundred dollars for
experimentation in Europe. In this same year Fulton built a model and
tested different means of propulsion, giving "the preference to a wheel
on each side of the model."* The boat was built on the Seine, but proved
too frail for the borrowed engine. A second boat was tried in August,
1803, and moved, though at a disappointingly slow rate of speed.
* Fulton to Barlow, quoted in Sutcliffe, "Robert Fulton and
the Clermont", p. 124.
Just at this time Fulton wrote ordering an engine from Boulton and Watt
to be transported to America. The order was at first refused, as it was
then the shortsighted policy of the British Government to maintain a
monopoly of mechanical contrivances. Permission to export was given the
next year, however, and the engine was shipped in 1805. It lay for some
time in the New York Customs House. Meanwhile Fulton had studied the
Watt engine on Symington's steamboat, the Charlotte Dundas, on the
Forth and Clyde Canal, and Livingston had been granted a renewal of his
monopoly of the waters of New York.
Fulton arrived at New York in 1806 and began the construction of the
Clermont, so named after Livingston's estate on the Hudson. The building
was done on the East River. The boat excited the jeers of passersby, who
called it "Fulton's Folly." On Monday, August 17, 1807, the memorable
first voyage was begun. Carrying a party of invited guests, the Clermont
steamed off at one o'clock. Past the towns and villages along the
Hudson, the boat moved steadily, black smoke rolling from her stack.
Pine wood was the fuel. During the night, the sparks pouring from her
funnel, the clanking of her machinery, and the splashing of the paddles
frightened the animals in the woods and the occupants of the scattered
houses along the banks. At one o'clock Tuesday the boat arrived at
Clermont, 110 miles from New York. After spending the night at Clermont,
the voyage was resumed on Wednesday. Albany, forty miles away, was
reached in eight hours, making a record of 150 miles in thirty-two
hours. Returning to New York, the distance was covered in thirty hours.
The steamboat was a success.
The boat was then laid up for two weeks while the cabins were boarded
in, a roof built over the engine, and coverings placed over the
paddle-wheels to catch the spray--all under Fulton's eye. Then the
Clermont began regular trips to Albany, carrying sometimes a hundred
passengers, making the round trip every four days, and continued until
floating ice marked the end of navigation for the winter.
Why had Fulton succeeded where others had failed? There was nothing
new in his boat. Every essential feature of the Clermont had been
anticipated by one or other of the numerous experimenters before him.
The answer seems to be that he was a better engineer than any of them.
He had calculated proportions, and his hull and his engine were in
relation. Then too, he had one of Watt's engines, undoubtedly the best
at the time, and the unwavering support of Robert Livingston.
Fulton's restless mind was never still, but he did not turn capriciously
from one idea to another. Though never satisfied, his new ideas were
tested scientifically and the results carefully written down. Some
of his notebooks read almost like geometrical demonstrations; and his
drawings and plans were beautifully executed. Before his death in 1815
he had constructed or planned sixteen or seventeen boats, including
boats for the Hudson, Potomac, and Mississippi rivers, for the Neva in
Russia, and a steam vessel of war for the United States. He was a member
of the commission on the Erie Canal, though he did not live to see that
enterprise begun.
The mighty influence of the steamboat in the development of inland
America is told elsewhere in this Series.* The steamboat has long since
grown to greatness, but it is well to remember that the true ancestor
of the magnificent leviathan of our own day is the Clermont of Robert
Fulton.
* Archer B. Hulbert, "The Paths of Inland Commerce".
The world today is on the eve of another great development in
transportation, quite as revolutionary as any that have preceded. How
soon will it take place? How long before Kipling's vision in "The Night
Mail" becomes a full reality? How long before the air craft comes to
play a great role in the world's transportation? We cannot tell. But,
after looking at the nearest parallel in the facts of history, each of
us may make his own guess. The airship appears now to be much farther
advanced than the steamboat was for many years after Robert Fulton died.
Already we have seen men ride the wind above the sea from the New World
to the Old. Already United States mails are regularly carried through
the air from the Atlantic to the Golden Gate. It was twelve years after
the birth of Fulton's Clermont, and four years after the inventor's
death, before any vessel tried to cross the Atlantic under steam. This
was in 1819, when the sailing packet Savannah, equipped with a ninety
horsepower horizontal engine and paddle-wheels, crossed from Savannah to
Liverpool in twenty-five days, during eighteen of which she used steam
power. The following year, however, the engine was taken out of the
craft. And it was not until 1833 that a real steamship crossed the
Atlantic. This time it was the Royal William, which made a successful
passage from Quebec to London. Four years more passed before the Great
Western was launched at Bristol, the first steamship to be especially
designed for transatlantic service, and the era of great steam liners
began.
If steam could be made to drive a boat on the water, why not a wagon on
the land?
History, seeking origins, often has difficulty when it attempts to
discover the precise origin of an idea. "It frequently happens,"
said Oliver Evans, "that two persons, reasoning right on a mechanical
subject, think alike and invent the same thing without any communication
with each other."* It is certain, however, that one of the first, if not
the first, protagonist of the locomotive in America was the same Oliver
Evans, a truly great inventor for whom the world was not quite ready.
The world has forgotten him. But he was the first engine builder in
America, and one of the best of his day. He gave to his countrymen the
high-pressure steam engine and new machinery for manufacturing flour
that was not superseded for a hundred years.
* Coleman Sellers, "Oliver Evans and His Inventions,"
"Journal of the Franklin Institute", July, 1886: vol. CXXII,
p. 16.
"Evans was apprenticed at the age of fourteen to a wheelwright. He was a
thoughtful, studious boy, who devoured eagerly the few books to which
he had access, even by the light of a fire of shavings, when denied
a candle by his parsimonious master. He says that in 1779, when only
seventeen years old, he began to contrive some method of propelling land
carriages by other means than animal power; and that he thought of a
variety of devices, such as using the force of the wind and treadles
worked by men; but as they were evidently inadequate, was about to give
up the problem as unsolvable for want of a suitable source of power,
when he heard that some neighboring blacksmith's boys had stopped up the
touch-hole of a gun barrel, put in some water, rammed down a tight wad,
and, putting the breech into the smith's fire, the gun had discharged
itself with a report like that of gunpowder. This immediately suggested
to his fertile mind a new source of power, and he labored long to
apply it, but without success, until there fell into his hands a book
describing the old atmospheric steam engine of Newcomen, and he was at
once struck with the fact that steam was only used to produce a vacuum
while to him it seemed clear that the elastic power of the steam if
applied directly to moving the piston, would be far more efficient.
He soon satisfied himself that he could make steam wagons, but could
convince no one else of this possibility."*
* Coleman Sellers, "Oliver Evans and His Inventions,"
"Journal of the Franklin Institute", July, 1886: vol. CXXII,
p. 3.
Evans was then living in Delaware, where he was born, and where he later
worked out his inventions in flour-milling machinery and invented and
put into service the high-pressure steam engine. He appears to have
moved to Philadelphia about 1790, the year of Franklin's death and of
the Federal Patent Act; and, as we have seen, the third patent issued
by the Government at Philadelphia was granted to him. About this time he
became absorbed in the hard work of writing a book, the "Millwright and
Miller's Guide", which he published in 1795, but at a heavy sacrifice
to himself in time and money. A few years later he had an established
engine works in Philadelphia and was making steam engines of his own
type that performed their work satisfactorily.
The Oruktor Amphibolos, or Amphibious Digger, which came out of his shop
in 1804, was a steamdriven machine made to the order of the Philadelphia
Board of Health for dredging and cleaning the docks of the city. It was
designed, as its name suggests, for service either in water or on shore.
It propelled itself across the city to the river front, puffing and
throwing off clouds of steam and making quite a sensation on the
streets.
Evans had never forgotten his dream of the "steam wagon." His Oruktor
had no sooner begun puffing than he offered to make for the Philadelphia
and Lancaster Turnpike Company steamdriven carriages to take the place
of their six-horse Conestoga wagons, promising to treble their profits.
But the directors of the road were conservative men and his arguments
fell on deaf ears.
In the same year Evans petitioned Congress for an extension of the
patent on his flour-milling machinery, which was about to expire. He
had derived little profit from this important invention, as the new
machinery made its way very slowly, but every year more and more millers
were using it and Evans received royalties from them. He felt sure that
Congress would renew his patent, and, with great expectations for the
future, he announced a new book in preparation by himself to be called
"The Young Engineer's Guide". It was to give the most thorough treatment
to the subject of the steam engine, with a profusion of drawings to
illustrate the text. But Evans reckoned without the millers who were
opposing his petition. Though they were profiting by his invention, they
were unwilling to pay him anything, and they succeeded in having his
bill in Congress defeated. It was a hard blow for the struggling author
and inventor. His income cut off, he was obliged to reduce the scale
of his book "and to omit many of the illustrations he had promised."
He wrote the sad story into the name of the book. It came out under the
title of "The Abortion of the Young Engineer's Guide".
Four years later, when Congress restored and extended his patent, Evans
felt that better days were ahead, but, as said already, he was too
far ahead of his time to be understood and appreciated. Incredulity,
prejudice, and opposition were his portion as long as he lived.
Nevertheless, he went on building good engines and had the satisfaction
of seeing them in extensive use. His life came to an end as the result
of what to him was the greatest possible tragedy. He was visiting
New York City in 1819, when news came to him of the destruction by an
incendiary of his beloved shops in Philadelphia. The shock was greater
than he could bear. A stroke of apoplexy followed, from which he died.
The following prophecy, written by Oliver Evans and published in 1812,
seventeen years before the practical use of the locomotive began, tells
us something of the vision of this early American inventor:
"The time will come when people will travel in stages moved by steam
engines from one city to another almost as fast as birds fly--fifteen
to twenty miles an hour. Passing through the air with such
velocity--changing the scenes in such rapid succession--will be the
most exhilarating, delightful exercise. A carriage will set out
from Washington in the morning, and the passengers will breakfast at
Baltimore, dine in Philadelphia, and sup at New York the same day.
"To accomplish this, two sets of railways will be laid so nearly level
as not in any place to deviate more than two degrees from a horizontal
line, made of wood or iron, on smooth paths of broken stone or gravel,
with a rail to guide the carriages so that they may pass each other
in different directions and travel by night as well as by day; and the
passengers will sleep in these stages as comfortably as they do now in
steam stage-boats."*
*Cited by Coleman Sellers, Ibid., p. 13.
Another early advocate of steam carriages and railways was John Stevens,
the rich inventor of Hoboken, who figures in the story of the steamboat.
In February, 1812, Stevens addressed to the commissioners appointed by
the State of New York to explore a route for the Erie Canal an elaborate
memoir calculated to prove that railways would be much more in the
public interest than the proposed canal. He wrote at the same time to
Robert R. Livingston (who, as well as Robert Fulton, his partner in the
steamboat, was one of the commissioners) requesting his influence in
favor of railways. Livingston, having committed himself to the steamboat
and holding a monopoly of navigation on the waters of New York State,
could hardly be expected to give a willing ear to a rival scheme, and
no one then seems to have dreamed that both canal and railway would
ultimately be needed. Livingston, however, was an enlightened statesman,
one of the ablest men of his day. He had played a prominent part in the
affairs of the Revolution and in the ratification of the Constitution;
had known Franklin and Washington and had negotiated with Napoleon the
Louisiana Purchase. His reply to Stevens is a good statement of the
objections to the railway, as seen at the time, and of the public
attitude towards it.
Robert R. Livingston to John Stevens
"Albany, 11th March, 1812.
"I did not, till yesterday, receive yours of the 5th of February; where
it has loitered on the road I am at a loss to say. I had before read
your very ingenious propositions as to the rail-way communication. I
fear, however, on mature reflection, that they will be liable to serious
objections, and ultimately more expensive than a canal. They must be
double, so as to prevent the danger of two such heavy bodies meeting.
The walls on which they are placed must at least be four feet below the
surface, and three above, and must be clamped with iron, and even then,
would hardly sustain so heavy a weight as you propose moving at the rate
of four miles an hour on wheels. As to wood, it would not last a week;
they must be covered with iron, and that too very thick and strong. The
means of stopping these heavy carriages without a great shock, and of
preventing them from running upon each other (for there would be many on
the road at once) would be very difficult. In case of accidental stops,
or the necessary stops to take wood and water &c many accidents would
happen. The carriage of condensed water would be very troublesome. Upon
the whole, I fear the expense would be much greater than that of canals,
without being so convenient."*
* John Stevens, "Documents Tending to Prove the Superior
Advantages of Rail-Ways and Steam-Carriages over Canal
Navigation" (1819). Reprinted in "The Magazine of History
with Notes and Queries", Extra Number 54 (1917).
Stevens, of course, could not convince the commissioners. "The
Communication from John Stevens, Esq.," was referred to a committee,
who reported in March: "That they have considered the said communication
with the attention due to a gentleman whose scientific researches and
knowledge of mechanical powers entitle his opinions to great respect,
and are sorry not to concur in them."
Stevens, however, kept up the fight. He published all the
correspondence, hoping to get aid from Congress for his design, and
spread his propaganda far and wide. But the War of 1812 soon absorbed
the attention of the country. Then came the Erie Canal, completed in
1825, and the extension into the Northwest of the great Cumberland Road.
From St. Louis steamboats churned their way up the Missouri, connecting
with the Santa Fe Trail to the Southwest and the Oregon Trail to the far
Northwest. Horses, mules, and oxen carried the overland travelers, and
none yet dreamed of being carried on the land by steam.
Back East, however, and across the sea in England, there were a few
dreamers. Railways of wooden rails, sometimes covered with iron, on
which wagons were drawn by horses, were common in Great Britain; some
were in use very early in America. And on these railways, or tramways,
men were now experimenting with steam, trying to harness it to do
the work of horses. In England, Trevithick, Blenkinsop, Ericsson,
Stephenson, and others; in America, John Stevens, now an old man but
persistent in his plans as ever and with able sons to help him, had
erected a circular railway at Hoboken as early as 1826, on which he ran
a locomotive at the rate of twelve miles an hour. Then in 1828 Horatio
Allen, of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, went over to England
and brought back with him the Stourbridge Lion. This locomotive, though
it was not a success in practice, appears to have been the first to turn
a wheel on a regular railway within the United States. It was a seven
days' wonder in New York when it arrived in May, 1829. Then Allen
shipped it to Honesdale, Pennsylvania, where the Delaware and Hudson
Canal Company had a tramway to bring down coal from the mountains to the
terminal of the canal. On the crude wooden rails of this tramway Allen
placed the Stourbridge Lion and ran it successfully at the rate of ten
miles an hour. But in actual service the Stourbridge Lion failed and was
soon dismantled.
Pass now to Rainhill, England, and witness the birth of the modern
locomotive, after all these years of labor. In the same year of 1829, on
the morning of the 6th of October, a great crowd had assembled to see an
extraordinary race--a race, in fact, without any parallel or precedent
whatsoever. There were four entries but one dropped out, leaving three:
The Novelty, John Braithwaite and John Ericsson; The Sanspareil, Timothy
Hackworth; The Rocket, George and Robert Stephenson. These were
not horses; they were locomotives. The directors of the London and
Manchester Railway had offered a prize of five hundred pounds for the
best locomotive, and here they were to try the issue.
The contest resulted in the triumph of Stephenson's Rocket. The others
fell early out of the race. The Rocket alone met all the requirements
and won the prize. So it happened that George Stephenson came into
fame and has ever since lived in popular memory as the father of
the locomotive. There was nothing new in his Rocket, except his own
workmanship. Like Robert Fulton, he appears to have succeeded where
others failed because he was a sounder engineer, or a better combiner of
sound principles into a working, whole, than any of his rivals.
Across the Atlantic came the news of Stephenson's remarkable success.
And by this time railroads were beginning in various parts of the United
States: the Mohawk and Hudson, from Albany to Schenectady; the Baltimore
and Ohio; the Charleston and Hamburg in South Carolina; the Camden and
Amboy, across New Jersey. Horses, mules, and even sails, furnished the
power for these early railroads. It can be imagined with what interest
the owners of these roads heard that at last a practicable locomotive
was running in England.
This news stimulated the directors of the Baltimore and Ohio to try the
locomotive. They had not far to go for an experiment, for Peter Cooper,
proprietor of the Canton Iron Works in Baltimore, had already designed
a small locomotive, the Tom Thumb. This was placed on trial in August,
1830, and is supposed to have been the first American-built locomotive
to do work on rails, though nearly coincident with it was the Best
Friend of Charleston, built by the West Point Foundry, New York, for the
Charleston and Hamburg Railroad. It is often difficult, as we have seen,
to say which of two or several things was first. It appears as though
the little Tom Thumb was the first engine built in America, which
actually pulled weight on a regular railway, while the much larger Best
Friend was the first to haul cars in regular daily service.
The West Point Foundry followed its first success with the West Point,
which also went into service on the Charleston and Hamburg Railroad, and
then built for the newly finished Mohawk and Hudson (the first link in
the New York Central Lines) the historic De Witt Clinton. This primitive
locomotive and the cars it drew may be seen today in the Grand Central
Station in New York.
Meanwhile, the Stevens brothers, sons of John Stevens, were engaged in
the construction of the Camden and Amboy Railroad. The first locomotive
to operate on this road was built in England by George Stephenson. This
was the John Bull, which arrived in the summer of 1831 and at once went
to work. The John Bull was a complete success and had a distinguished
career. Sixty-two years old, in 1893, it went to Chicago, to the
Columbian Exposition, under its own steam. The John Bull occupies a
place today in the National Museum at Washington.
With the locomotive definitely accepted, men began to turn their minds
towards its improvement and development, and locomotive building soon
became a leading industry in America. At first the British types and
patterns were followed, but it was not long before American designers
began to depart from the British models and to evolve a distinctively
American type. In the development of this type great names have been
written into the industrial history of America, among which the name of
Matthias Baldwin of Philadelphia probably ranks first. But there have
been hundreds of great workers in this field. From Stephenson's Rocket
and the little Tom Thumb of Peter Cooper, to the powerful "Mallets"
of today, is a long distance--not spanned in ninety years save by the
genius and restless toil of countless brains and hands.
If the locomotive could not remain as it was left by Stephenson and
Cooper, neither could the stationary steam engine remain as it was left
by James Watt and Oliver Evans. Demands increasing and again increasing,
year after year, forced the steam engine to grow in order to meet its
responsibilities. There were men living in Philadelphia in 1876, who had
known Oliver Evans personally; at least one old man at the Centennial
Exhibition had himself seen the Oruktor Amphibolos and recalled the
consternation it had caused on the streets of the city in 1804. It
seemed a far cry back to the Oruktor from the great and beautiful
engine, designed by George Henry Corliss, which was then moving all the
vast machinery of the Centennial Exhibition. But since then achievements
in steam have dwarfed even the great work of Corliss. And to do a kind
of herculean task that was hardly dreamed of in 1876 another type of
engine has made its entrance: the steam turbine, which sends its awful
energy, transformed into electric current, to light a million lamps or
to turn ten thousand wheels on distant streets and highways.