The Age of Invention: A Chronicle of Mechanical ConquestThompson, Holland
History
The Age of Invention: A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest
Thompson, Holland
Inventions -- History; Inventors -- United States
Across the Atlantic came the news of Stephenson's remarkable success.
And by this time railroads were beginning in various parts of the United
States: the Mohawk and Hudson, from Albany to Schenectady; the Baltimore
and Ohio; the Charleston and Hamburg in South Carolina; the Camden and
Amboy, across New Jersey. Horses, mules, and even sails, furnished the
power for these early railroads. It can be imagined with what interest
the owners of these roads heard that at last a practicable locomotive
was running in England.
This news stimulated the directors of the Baltimore and Ohio to try the
locomotive. They had not far to go for an experiment, for Peter Cooper,
proprietor of the Canton Iron Works in Baltimore, had already designed
a small locomotive, the Tom Thumb. This was placed on trial in August,
1830, and is supposed to have been the first American-built locomotive
to do work on rails, though nearly coincident with it was the Best
Friend of Charleston, built by the West Point Foundry, New York, for the
Charleston and Hamburg Railroad. It is often difficult, as we have seen,
to say which of two or several things was first. It appears as though
the little Tom Thumb was the first engine built in America, which
actually pulled weight on a regular railway, while the much larger Best
Friend was the first to haul cars in regular daily service.
The West Point Foundry followed its first success with the West Point,
which also went into service on the Charleston and Hamburg Railroad, and
then built for the newly finished Mohawk and Hudson (the first link in
the New York Central Lines) the historic De Witt Clinton. This primitive
locomotive and the cars it drew may be seen today in the Grand Central
Station in New York.
Meanwhile, the Stevens brothers, sons of John Stevens, were engaged in
the construction of the Camden and Amboy Railroad. The first locomotive
to operate on this road was built in England by George Stephenson. This
was the John Bull, which arrived in the summer of 1831 and at once went
to work. The John Bull was a complete success and had a distinguished
career. Sixty-two years old, in 1893, it went to Chicago, to the
Columbian Exposition, under its own steam. The John Bull occupies a
place today in the National Museum at Washington.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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