There are two inventions that have made possible the high speeds of modern railroad travel: the air brake, which has already been described; and the block signal system. The latter, of which there are a number of different types, being electrical, does not properly belong in this book.
Stoking a large freight engine or a high speed passenger locomotive is strenuous work. Three tons of coal per hour is not an uncommon rate of consumption. The fireman on a fast express train gets little rest. To relieve him of this exhaustive work automatic stokers are now being used. These convey the coal from the tender to the fire box and feed the fuel at a uniform rate. In place of solid fuel, oil is extensively used in regions where it may readily be obtained. This simplifies the task of firing the locomotives. There has also been some use of powdered coal which is blown into the furnace in much the same way as oil is.
To-day steam locomotives have found a serious competitor in the electric locomotive, which is steadily increasing in favor.
Where traffic is heavy, where long tunnels make the smoke and gases of a steam locomotive dangerous, where electric power is plentiful, the steam locomotive must give place to electricity. As the cost of coal mounts, the electrification of railroads will spread and it will be only a matter of time before the electric locomotive, which is far more economical in its use of power, will completely supplant the steam locomotive.
FIRST AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENT
As we have already noted, the automobile antedated the railway locomotive. It was an accident that took the primitive steam carriage off the high roads and put it on rails. In 1802 Richard Trevithic, while speeding along a road at the frightful speed of ten miles per hour, lost control of his machine, ran into a fence and ripped off a number of palings. That accident spelled the doom of the early automobile. So dangerous a machine was not allowed to run at large. Special tolls and restrictions were placed on power-driven road vehicles. As late as 1896 when the automobile had become a practical machine in France and was being rapidly developed in this country, England still had a law prohibiting any power-propelled vehicle to travel over the highways at a higher speed than four miles per hour and required further that the vehicle be preceded by a man bearing a red flag.
The most important early American road car was that built by Richard Dudgeon in 1855, which made a record speed of forty miles per hour. In 1889 Serpollet, in France, invented the flash boiler and interest in steam-driven automobiles was revived. In a flash boiler water is turned into steam as it is used by injecting small quantities at a time in a red-hot tube. In the meantime, however, the internal combustion engine was being developed. Lenoir, in France, was the first to build a motor car driven by an internal combustion engine. He obtained a patent on such a vehicle in 1860. However, the real father of the modern automobile was Gottlieb Daimler of Germany, who patented a motor vehicle in 1884 driven by an internal combustion engine. The next year Karl Benz, another German, built an automobile.
AMERICAN PIONEERS OF THE MOTOR CAR
Pioneer work in this country began with Charles E. Duryea in 1891. Five years later he took one of his machines to England, where it entered a fifty-two-mile race between London and Brighton. There were many entrants from France, Germany, and other European countries. The American car won the race by nearly an hour over its nearest competitor. Commercial building of automobiles began in America in 1894. However, it was not until the opening of the twentieth century that America took hold of the motor car in real earnest. Since then the rise of the automobile industry has been phenomenal. American methods of manufacture were applied and cars were turned out in quantity. In 1916 the annual production exceeded a million and to-day the production is about two million passenger cars and over three hundred thousand trucks. The motor car industry is largely responsible for the wonderful progress in American machine tools that has been made in the past two decades.
On the race track the motor car has established a record speed of 131 miles per hour, but of greater utility has been the motor truck which now competes with railroads in the transportation of freight. Owing to New York’s inadequate terminal facilities, it takes less time to haul a load from New York to Philadelphia by motor truck than to take the same load from the warehouse, transport it across the Hudson River, and load it on a freight car. It has made the country a part of the city. A short run brings the farmer’s produce to the markets and his passenger car keeps him in close touch with city life. The motor tractor has lightened his work on the farm and has enabled him to conduct farming operations over vast areas. Animal power is gradually giving way to mechanical power. This, however, is a special branch of automotive engineering which we must look into.