The First Locomotive.
The work of the different engineers differs only in detail, not in kind.
Let us now glance at the history of the steam horse, which has done more than any other one thing to revolutionize the world.
Be very sure that the locomotive, with its pistons, its spinning drive wheels, its polished steel and shining brass, did not come into existence all at once.
By no means. Like everything else in the way of mechanical invention that attains greatness, the locomotive had an insignificant beginning to reach which we shall be obliged to get back somewhere about the middle of the last century, for then it was that the desire for faster traveling than horses can furnish seems to have had its birth.
The first attempt at a railway seems to have been at Colebrook Dale, England, a spot celebrated for having the first iron bridge in the world—where a small iron road was constructed in connection with some mines; a horse furnished the motive power here.
The first railroad then was without a locomotive, and, strangely enough the first locomotive was without a railroad on which to run.
The first locomotive made its appearance in France. It was simply a huge tea kettle on wheels, and was built by Joseph Cugnot at Paris in the year 1769.
It is the custom of English writers to ignore Cugnot's invention, and claim for themselves the origin of the locomotive; but that is only a pleasant way the English usually have.
Cugnot's locomotive actually existed though, and was undoubtedly the first. It was operated by means of two bronze cylinders, into which the steam passed through a tube from the boiler—escaping through another tube.