Perhaps his most important work at this period was a device for creating artificial draught in locomotives, to which aid the development of our railroad owes much. In 1829 the Liverpool & Manchester Railroad offered a prize of $2,500 for the best locomotive capable of doing certain work. The prize was taken by Stephenson with his famous Rocket; but his sharpest competitor in this contest was John Ericsson. Four locomotives entered the contest. The London _Times_ of October 8, 1829, speaks highly of the Novelty, the locomotive entered by Messrs. Braithwaite & Ericsson, saying: "It was the lightest and most elegant carriage on the road yesterday, and the velocity with which it moved surprised and amazed every beholder. It shot along the line at the amazing rate of thirty miles an hour. It seemed indeed to fly, presenting one of the most sublime spectacles of human ingenuity and human daring the world ever beheld." [Illustration: Ericsson on his Arrival in England, aged twenty-three.] [Illustration: Mrs. John Ericsson, née Amelia Byam. (From an early daguerreotype.)] The railroad directors, at whose invitation this test was made, had asked for ten miles an hour; Ericsson gave them thirty. The excitement of the witnesses found vent in loud cheers. Within an hour the shares of the railroad company rose ten per cent., and the young engineer might well have considered his fortune made. But although he had beaten his rival ten miles an hour, the judges determined to make traction power, rather than speed, the critical test, and the prize was awarded to Stephenson's Rocket, which drew seventeen tons for seventy miles at the rate of thirteen miles an hour. Stephenson's engine weighed twice as much as Ericsson's. Nevertheless Ericsson's success with the Novelty was such as to keep him busy in this particular field. He followed it up with a steam fire-engine that astonished London at the burning of the Argyle Rooms, in 1829, when for the first time, as one of the local papers remarked, "fire was extinguished by the mechanical power of fire." Another engine, of larger power, built for the King of Prussia, soon after rendered excellent service in Berlin, and a third was built for Liverpool in 1830. Ten years afterward the Mechanics' Institute of New York awarded a gold medal to Ericsson as a prize for the best plan of a steam-engine. [Illustration: Exterior View of Ericsson's House, No. 36 Beach Street, New York, 1890.]