Yet all their objections were made in good faith, and we have by no means selected the most absurd.
Old No. 1. proving too clumsy, a lighter locomotive was soon after built by Stephenson, called the "Rocket," which we illustrate. It won a prize of $1,500 in 1829, and is still preserved in the great locomotive works at Newcastle-on-Tyne, England.
The first railroad in America was built from the granite quarries of Quincy, Mass., to the Neponset river, a few miles distant.
Peter Cooper built one of the first American locomotives. It ran on the Baltimore and Ohio R. R., and was called the Tom Thumb.
The boiler of the Tom Thumb was built of gun barrels and shaped like a huge bottle standing upright upon a simple platform car.
Such was the beginning of the locomotive.
In Great Britain alone over 600,000,000 people are annually drawn by locomotives.
Add to these figures, which represent only a small island, the persons drawn by locomotives in America, Europe, and other parts of the world, and the number becomes stupendous almost beyond belief.