The patent of Peter Cooper, which now lies before me,—a time-stained parchment bearing the great seal of the United States and the autographs of the famous men named above,—is accompanied by no drawings; but it contains a detailed specification which shows that the invention consisted in an arrangement by which, at each forward movement, a prolongation of the piston rod clawed into an endless chain, which was pulled back by the return stroke. This chain passed around a wheel, to which it consequently imparted a rotary motion.
Engineers do not need to be told that this cumbrous arrangement could not successfully replace the crank, even if such a replacement were desirable. Yet the inventor constructed a working-machine, and satisfied himself, by a "duty trial" of some sort, that it "saved two fifths of the steam." His discovery, however, was not hailed with immediate recognition by the mechanical public; and its author, undisturbed in his faith, bided his time.
This, by the way, points to a characteristic of Peter Cooper, differentiating him from the numerous enthusiasts whom prudent men are accustomed to avoid. He was not a man "of one idea." His fertile and ingenious mind threw out its suggestions in every direction, into fields untrodden by experience; but when any such plan failed of acceptance, he turned, with undiminished courage and hope, to something else, remaining, nevertheless, still steadfast in his former conception, and ready to seize any opportunity for its realization.
Thus it came to pass that Mr. Cooper's abortive improvement upon the steam engine was the source of his fame as the builder of the first American locomotive, as the following chapter will explain.
V
THE TOM THUMB
In the specification of the patent secured in 1828 by Mr. Cooper for an improved steam engine, he took pains to declare the suitability of his invention as a motor for "land carriages." No doubt he had heard of Stephenson's "Rocket," if not of the engine built by Blenkinsop in 1813, the sight of which in operation caused Stephenson to resolve that he would "make a better." The famous competitive trial of the Rocket, the Novelty, the Sanspareil, and the Perseverance, on a two-mile section of the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad, took place in October, 1827, at which time Peter Cooper must have been perfecting the application for his patent.
But other circumstances played their part in the result which we are about to consider. Some time before 1830 Mr. Cooper had been drawn into a land speculation at Canton, in the suburbs of Baltimore. Failing of support from his partners, he had been obliged to buy them out, and to assume the whole burden of the enterprise. Just at that time there was great popular expectation of the future importance of Baltimore. A little earlier, there had been general despair among the merchants of that city. New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore were seeking the trade of the region beyond the Alleghanies,—then "the West," but now the centre of the population of the United States. New York flanked the mountains with her Erie Canal; Philadelphia got at last a practicable, though less satisfactory, water line; but Baltimore, though nearest of all to the longed-for market, found, through careful examination by eminent engineers, that no canal was practicable for her, at a cost within her means. In 1824 and 1825 the consequent general despondency concerning the future of the city was so strong that Baltimore merchants began to move to New York and Philadelphia.[3]