The contest resulted in the triumph of Stephenson's Rocket.The others fell early out of the race.The Rocket alone met all the requirements and won the prize.So it happened that George Stephenson came into fame and has ever since lived in popular memory as the father of the locomotive.There was nothing new in his Rocket, except his own workmanship.Like Robert Fulton, he appears to have succeeded where others failed because he was a sounder engineer, or a better combiner of sound principles into a working, whole, than any of his rivals.
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.
With the locomotive definitely accepted, men began to turn their minds towards its improvement and development, and locomotive building soon became a leading industry in America.At first the British types and patterns were followed, but it was not long before American designers began to depart from the British models and to evolve a distinctively American type.In the development of this type great names have been written into the industrial history of America, among which the name of Matthias Baldwin of Philadelphia probably ranks first.But there have been hundreds of great workers in this field.From Stephenson's Rocket and the little Tom Thumb of Peter Cooper, to the powerful "Mallets" of today, is a long distance--not spanned in ninety years save by the genius and restless toil of countless brains and hands.
If the locomotive could not remain as it was left by Stephenson and Cooper, neither could the stationary steam engine remain as it was left by James Watt and Oliver Evans.Demands increasing and again increasing, year after year, forced the steam engine to grow in order to meet its responsibilities.There were men living in Philadelphia in 1876, who had known Oliver Evans personally;at least one old man at the Centennial Exhibition had himself seen the Oruktor Amphibolos and recalled the consternation it had caused on the streets of the city in 1804.It seemed a far cry back to the Oruktor from the great and beautiful engine, designed by George Henry Corliss, which was then moving all the vast machinery of the Centennial Exhibition.But since then achievements in steam have dwarfed even the great work of Corliss.And to do a kind of herculean task that was hardly dreamed of in 1876 another type of engine has made its entrance:
the steam turbine, which sends its awful energy, transformed into electric current, to light a million lamps or to turn ten thousand wheels on distant streets and highways.
