From an Old Time-table. (Furnished by the ABC Pathfinder Railway Guide.)
In 1816 the streets of Baltimore were lighted with gas. A gas-light
company was incorporated in New York in 1823. Not till 1836, however,
did the Philadelphia streets have gas lights. The first savings-banks
were established in Philadelphia and Boston in 1816. Baltimore had one
two years later. Portable fire-proof safes were used in 1820. The Lehigh
coal trade flourished this year, and also the manufacture of iron with
coal. The whale fishery, too, was now beginning. The first factory in
Lowell started in 1821. In 1822 there was a copper rolling mill in
Baltimore, the only one then in America, and Paterson, N. J., began the
manufacture of cotton duck. Patent leather was made in the United States
by 1819. In 1824 Amesbury, Mass., had a water-power manufactory of
flannel. The next year the practice of homoeopathy began in America, and
matches of a rude sort were displacing the old tinder-box. The next
year after this Hartford produced axes and other edged tools.
Lithography, of which there had been specimens so early as 1818, was a
Boston business in 1827. Pittsburgh manufactured damask table linen in
1828. The same year saw paper made from straw, and planing machinery in
operation. The insuring of lives began in this country in 1812.
Trial between Peter Cooper's Locomotive "Tom Thumb" and one of Stockton's
and Stokes' Horse Cars. From "History of the First Locomotive in
America."
The first figured muslin woven by the power-loom in America, and perhaps
in the world, was produced at Central Falls, R. I., in 1829. Calico
printing began at Lowell the same year, also the manufacture of cutlery
at Worcester, of sewing-silk at Mansfield, Conn., of galvanized iron in
New York City. With the new decade chloroform was invented, in 1831,
being first used as a medicine, not as an anaesthetic. Reaping machines
were on trial the same year, and three years later machine-made wood
screws were turned out at Providence. About the same time, 1832, pins
were made by machinery, hosiery was woven by a power-loom process, and
Colt perfected his revolver. In 1837 brass clocks were put upon the
American market, and by 1840 extensively exported. Also in 1837 Nashua
was making machinists' tools. By 1839 the manufacture of iron with hard
coal was a pronounced success. In 1840 daguerreotypes began to appear.
Steam fire-engines were seen the next year.
Peter Cooper's Locomotive, 1829.
So early as 1816 the New York and Philadelphia stages made the distance
from city to city between sun and sun. The National Road from Cumberland
was finished to Wheeling in 1820, having been fourteen years in
construction and costing $17,000,000. It was subsequently extended
westward across Ohio and Indiana. It was thirty-five feet wide,
thoroughly macadamized, and had no grade of above five degrees. Over
parts of this road no less than 150 six-horse teams passed daily,
besides four or five four-horse mail and passenger coaches. In Jackson's
time, when for some months there was talk of war with France and extra
measures were thought proper for assuring the loyalty of Louisiana,
swift mail connections were made with the Mississippi by the National
Road. Its entire length was laid out into sections of sixty-three miles
apiece, each with three boys and nine horses, only six hours and
eighteen minutes being allowed for traversing a section, viz., a rate of
about ten miles an hour. Great men and even presidents travelled by the
public coaches of this road, though many of them used their own
carriages. James K. Polk often made the journey from Nashville to
Washington in his private carriage. Keeping down the Cumberland River to
the Ohio, and up this to Wheeling, he would strike into the National
Road eastward to Cumberland, Md. He came thus so late as 1845, to be
inaugurated as President; only at this time he used the new railway from
Cumberland to the Relay House, where he changed to the other new railway
which had already joined Baltimore with Washington.
Obverse and Reverse of a Ticket used in 1838 on the New York & Harlem
Railroad.
The first omnibus made its appearance in New York in 1830, the name
itself originating from the word painted upon this vehicle. The first
street railway was laid two years later. The era of the stage coach was
at this time beginning to end, that of canals and railroads opening. Yet
in the remoter sections of the country the old coach was destined to
hold its place for decades still. Where roads were fair it would not
uncommonly make one hundred miles between early morning and late
evening, as between Boston and Springfield, Springfield and Albany. So
soon as available the canal packet was a much more easy and elegant
means of travel. The Erie Canal was begun in 1817, finished to Rochester
in 1823, the first boat arriving October 8th. The year 1825 carried it
to Buffalo. The Blackstone Canal, between Worcester and Providence, was
opened its whole length in 1828; the next year many others, as the
Chesapeake and Delaware, the Cumberland and Oxford in Maine, the
Farmington in Connecticut, the Oswego, connecting the Erie Canal with
Lake Ontario, also the Delaware and Hudson, one hundred and eight miles
long, from Honesdale, Pa., to Hudson River. The Welland Canal was
completed in 1830.
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, 1830.
Salt-water transportation had meantime been much facilitated by the use
of steam. It had been thought a great achievement when, in 1817, the
Black Ball line of packet ships between New York and Liverpool was
regularly established, consisting of four vessels of from four hundred
to five hundred tons apiece. But two years later a steamship crossed the
Atlantic to Liverpool from Savannah. It took her twenty-five
days--longer than the time in which the distance often used to be
accomplished under sail. In 1822 there was a regular steamboat between
Norfolk and New York, though no steamboat was owned in Boston till 1828.
The Atlantic was first crossed exclusively by steam-power in 1838, and
the first successful propeller used in 1839. The last-named year also
witnessed the beginning of a permanent express line between Boston and
New York, by the Stonington route. The next year, the Adams Express
Company was founded, doing its first business between these two cities
over the Springfield route, in competition with that by the Stonington.
