At the left, William Murdock's automobile of about the year 1781. Murdock made several experimental models which worked successfully, but strangely enough Bolton and Watt, his employers, discouraged his efforts and induced him ultimately to abandon the invention, which nevertheless had demonstrated the possibility of propelling a vehicle by steam power. At the right, the original model of Richard Trevethick's road locomotive, constructed in 1797. The success of this model led Trevethick to construct a steam carriage which was successfully tried on the roads in England in 1801. The small picture in the upper corner shows the modern craft that is the outgrowth of these crude vehicles--the winning automobile in the Vanderbilt race on Long Island in 1909.] As the case stands, however, the automobile of Murdoch failed as signally as had that of Cugnot to gain general recognition. But it is quite possible that a knowledge of the device had come to the attention of another Englishman, Richard Trevithick by name, who was at once a practical experimenter of great skill and a man of fertile imagination. Trevithick, himself the inventor of a high-pressure steam engine, adjusted his engine to a large road vehicle, and in the year 1804 exhibited this automobile on the roads of Cornwall, and subsequently in London, where it would probably have made its way had not the inventor been an extremely erratic genius, who presently shut up his coach and turned his attention to another form of vehicle. This, it will be observed, was full twenty-five years before that memorable date on which Stephenson launched his famous _Rocket_. Nothing came of Trevithick's experiment at the moment, beyond the demonstration of a principle--which indeed was much; but it was not long before various other inventors took up the idea, and as early as 1824 a number of automobiles, some of them weighing as much as three or four tons, were in successful operation on the highways of England. Some of these even gave regular passenger service, and attained the unprecedented speed of twelve or fourteen miles an hour. All this, it will be observed, was before the first locomotive running on rails had attracted any attention. Stephenson had indeed begun his experiments, but up to this time they had been confined exclusively to tramways in connection with collieries.