Great Cities of the United States: Historical, Descriptive, Commercial, IndustrialSouthworth, Gertrude Van Duyn
History
Great Cities of the United States: Historical, Descriptive, Commercial, Industrial
Southworth, Gertrude Van Duyn
Cities and towns -- United States; United States -- Description and travel
Besides the American railroads using Baldwin locomotives, engines built
in this plant are in use in many foreign lands. There is hardly a part of
the world to which one can go where a Philadelphia-made locomotive is
not to be seen.
[Illustration: THE FIRST TRAIN ON THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD]
Philadelphia holds an important place in the construction of high-grade
machine tools. She has great rolling mills, foundries, and machine shops,
and one of the most famous bridge-building establishments in the world.
Her people smile at being called slow; in fourteen weeks a Philadelphia
concern made from pig iron a steel bridge a quarter of a mile long,
carried it halfway around the world, and set it up over a river in
Africa.
Shipbuilding in Philadelphia began with the founding of the colony. It
was the first American city to build ships and was also the home of the
steamboat. The first boat to be propelled by steam was built by John
Fitch in Philadelphia in 1786. This was more than twenty years before
Robert Fulton had his first steamboat on the Hudson River. Robert
Fulton, who was a Pennsylvanian by birth, also lived at one time in
Philadelphia. Shipbuilding, to-day, is one of the city's great
industries.
[Illustration: A PRESENT-DAY LOCOMOTIVE]
The art of printing has been practiced in Philadelphia since the very
beginning of its history. William Bradford, one of the first colonists,
published an almanac for the year 1687. This was the first work printed
in Philadelphia. Benjamin Franklin entered the printing business in
Philadelphia in 1723, and six years later published the _Pennsylvania
Gazette_. This was the second newspaper printed in the colony, the first
being the _American Weekly Mercury_, the first edition of which was
printed in Philadelphia in 1719. Both of these papers were very small and
would appear very odd alongside of the daily papers of to-day. The first
complete edition of the Bible printed in the United States was published
by Christopher Saur in Germantown, which is now a part of Philadelphia,
in 1743. Philadelphia ranks first among the cities of the United States
in the publication of scientific books and law books. One of the large
publishing houses of the city now uses over a million dollars' worth of
paper each year. It is interesting to know that when the Revolutionary
War began there were forty paper mills in and near Philadelphia. At that
time, and for many years after, it was the great literary center of the
country.
[Illustration: IN FAIRMOUNT PARK]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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