Great Inventions and Discoveries

by Willis Duff Piercy

In September, 1825, the first train passed over the road. It consisted of thirty-four cars weighing, all told, ninety tons. The train was pulled by Stephenson's engine, operated by Stephenson himself, with a signalman riding on horseback in advance. The train moved off at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour, and on certain parts of the road it reached a speed of fifteen miles per hour. The trial was a complete success.

The road had been built chiefly for the transportation of freight, but from the first passengers insisted on being carried, and in October, 1825, the Company began to run a daily passenger coach called the "Experiment." This coach carried six persons inside and from fifteen to twenty outside. The round trip between Stockton and Darlington was made in two hours. A fare of one shilling was charged, and each passenger was allowed fourteen pounds of baggage free. The Stockton and Darlington was the first railway in the world over which passengers and freight were hauled by steam.

Stephenson was next employed to help construct a railway between Liverpool and Manchester. The most eminent engineers of the day predicted that the road could not be built. But it was built. On the fifteenth of September, 1830, Stephenson made a trial trip over the road with an improved locomotive named the "Rocket." On the trial trip the "Rocket" made twenty-nine miles an hour. This trip firmly proved the possibilities of steam as motive power on railways and started the modern era of railroad building. Other railways were quickly built and soon they radiated from London to nearly every English seaport.

An Early Railroad Train in England

Stephenson's son, Robert, assisted him in the construction of the "Rocket" and later attained considerable reputation as an engineer.

It is claimed that George Stephenson was the inventor of the safety lamp for use in mines, an invention usually accredited to Sir Humphry Davy. He was often consulted in the building of subsequent railroads, but he spent the last years of his life in farming and gardening at his home at Chesterfield, England, where he died August 12, 1848.

Before the days of railroads in America, freight was hauled on canals and passengers rode in stage coaches or on horseback. A coach made the trip from Boston to New York twice a week and the journey required six days. A trip from New York to Philadelphia took two days. From Philadelphia to Baltimore the roads were good, but south of Baltimore they were bad and even dangerous. South of the James River the traveler was compelled to make his journey on horseback. A coach from Charleston to Savannah was the only public conveyance south of the Potomac River.

In the days of the old colonial stagecoach, if a traveler wished to go from Boston to New York, he would have to be ready to begin the journey at three o'clock in the morning. The stage had no glass windows, no door or step, and passengers were obliged to climb in at the front. One pair of horses pulled the stage eighteen miles, and then they were relieved by another pair. At about ten o'clock in the evening, after a day's journey of forty miles, the stage drew up at an inn for the night. At three o'clock the next morning, after dressing by the light of a horn lantern, the traveler must resume his journey. If the roads were bad, he might have to alight from the stage and help the driver pull the wheels out of the mud. Rivers were crossed on clumsy flat-boats. When the streams were swollen with rains or filled with floating ice, the passage across was often dangerous. The trip from Boston to Philadelphia, which would have taken eight days of Washington's time, can easily be made now by train in as many hours. In these days of the modern railroad, San Francisco is nearer in time to New York than Washington was scarcely a hundred years ago.

The first railway in America was built in 1826. It connected a granite quarry at Quincy, Massachusetts, with the town of Milton in the same state. It was only two or three miles long, and was operated with horses. In May, 1829, three English locomotives—the first ever seen in America—were unloaded at New York City. On August 9 of the same year, one of these engines was tried at Honesdale, Pennsylvania. This was the first time that a locomotive ever turned a wheel on a railway in America.