The first railroad was built in England, in 1811. The first ocean steamer was the Savannah, an American craft of 350 tons, which sailed from New York for Liverpool, July 15, 1819, making the voyage in 26 days. Such were the early beginnings of steam. There are three principal kinds of engineers, locomotive, steamboat and stationary. In this little book we propose to deal mainly with the duties of a locomotive engineer. If one is a good locomotive engineer he can easily learn to manage the engine of a steamboat; and if he is skilled in either of these particulars he will have no difficulty with the biggest stationary engine ever built. [Illustration: THE FIRST LOCOMOTIVE.] The work of the different engineers differs only in detail, not in kind. Let us now glance at the history of the steam horse, which has done more than any other one thing to revolutionize the world. Be very sure that the locomotive, with its pistons, its spinning drive wheels, its polished steel and shining brass, did not come into existence all at once. By no means. Like everything else in the way of mechanical invention that attains greatness, the locomotive had an insignificant beginning to reach which we shall be obliged to get back somewhere about the middle of the last century, for then it was that the desire for faster traveling than horses can furnish seems to have had its birth. The first attempt at a railway seems to have been at Colebrook Dale, England, a spot celebrated for having the first iron bridge in the world--where a small iron road was constructed in connection with some mines; a horse furnished the motive power here. The first railroad then was without a locomotive, and, strangely enough the first locomotive was without a railroad on which to run. The first locomotive made its appearance in France. It was simply a huge tea kettle on wheels, and was built by Joseph Cugnot at Paris in the year 1769. It is the custom of English writers to ignore Cugnot's invention, and claim for themselves the origin of the locomotive; but that is only a pleasant way the English usually have. Cugnot's locomotive actually existed though, and was undoubtedly the first. It was operated by means of two bronze cylinders, into which the steam passed through a tube from the boiler--escaping through another tube. The boiler was fastened on the front of the car, which moved on three wheels--the steam acted only on the foremost wheel. The speed of Cugnot's locomotive was about three miles an hour. On the first trial it ran into a building and was broken to pieces. In 1784 the famous Watt patented a steam locomotive engine in England, which, however, never was put to use. In 1802, Trevethick and Vivian patented a locomotive, which, in 1804, traveled at the rate of five miles an hour, drawing behind it a load of ten tons of coal.