The first steam fire-engine—an apparatus which to-day constitutes perhaps the most important feature of a city’s fire department—was invented and built by Ericsson in 1829. Previously, and as a matter of fact for years afterward, hand-operated engines, manned by crews of volunteer firemen, fought the fires which so frequently destroyed vast sections of the wood-constructed cities of those early days. It is not surprising that this valuable invention did not receive immediate recognition, for inventors rarely obtain such recognition from the people whom their inventions benefit. In fact, Ericsson’s portable steam fire-engine was actually condemned as an impracticable contrivance that could serve no useful purpose. To-day we travel thousands of miles by railroad; a hundred years ago our great-great-grandfathers traveled by horse-drawn coaches. Where we may now speed a mile a minute behind a giant steam locomotive, they were content with what seemed to them the tremendous speed of eleven miles an hour. But all things change. There are always leaders in the world’s progress. Of these leaders was John Ericsson. Travel had been a luxury of the rich; the invention of the steam locomotive made fast and economical travel possible to the poor as well. In 1829 a prize of two thousand five hundred dollars was offered for the best steam locomotive which could draw a weight of twenty tons at the rate of ten miles an hour. Ericsson had never built a locomotive, but he entered the contest. His greatest competitor was George Stephenson, who for several years had built small locomotives for use in coal mines. On the great day of the trial thousands of people thronged the track to witness the novel sight. Never in the world’s history had there been a public experiment so momentous, unless we except the journey of the American inventor’s steamship, the Clermont, on her first historic progress up the Hudson River. The locomotive entered in the contest by Stephenson was named the Rocket, a strong well-built engine that ultimately was awarded the prize. But although he was not the winner in this great competition, to Ericsson belongs great credit, for his locomotive, the Novelty, passed the Rocket at the amazing speed, for those days, of thirty miles an hour, and failed to win the prize only because of certain defects in its construction which caused it to break down before the goal was reached. Ericsson was twenty-six years old when he built the Novelty. Already he had contributed many useful inventions to the world. But his greatest triumphs were still to come. He had been beaten fairly and squarely by Stephenson, but his was not the spirit that is easily subdued. Ericsson, like the hero of Greek mythology, rose the stronger each time an adversary cast him to the earth. In 1836 he married a nineteen-year-old English girl, Amelia Byam, granddaughter of Sir Charles Byam, some time British Commissioner for Antigua.