![]() Cooper's success was such as to induce him to try a trip to Ellicott's Mills and an open car, the first used upon the road, already mentioned, having been attached to his engine, and filled with the directors and some friends, the speaker among the rest, the first journey by steam in America was commenced. Cooper used therefore a blowing-apparatus, driven by a drum attached to one of the car wheels, over which passed a cord that in its turn worked a pulley on the shaft of the blower. No natural draught could have been sufficient to keep up steam in so small a boiler and Mr. The cylinder was but three-and-a half inches in diameter, and speed was gotten up by gearing. It stood upright in the car, and was filled, above the furnace, which occupied the lower section, with vertical tubes. It was of about the same diameter, but not much more than half as high. Cooper's engine was not as large as the kitchen boiler attached to many a range in modern mansions. He was present on that eventful day as the locomotive's builder piloted the "Tom Thumb" into history: John Latrobe was a lawyer for the B&O Railroad from its inception. ".it was determined to have a race home." ![]() However, within a few years the railroad would become the dominate form of long-distance transportation and relegate the canals to the dustbin of commercial history. On the return trip, an impromptu race with a horse-drawn car developed. The outbound journey took less than an hour. Passengers thrilled at the heart-pumping sensation of traveling at the then un-heard speed of 18 mph. Syndicate members and friends piled into an open car pulled by a diminutive steam locomotive appropriately named the "Tom Thumb" with its inventor at the controls. It was a bright summer's day and full of promise. The railroad was also ready to test its first steam engine - an American-made locomotive engineered by Peter Cooper of New York. The solution lay with the steam engine.īy 1830, the B&O Railroad had extended its track from Baltimore to the village of Ellicott's Mills thirteen miles to the west. However, it soon became obvious that animal muscle was no match for the long distances and mountainous terrain that would have to be traveled. Initially, the railroad's power was to be provided by horses. The railroad's objective was to connect Baltimore with the Ohio River and the West. In 1828, the Maryland syndicate, led by Charles Carroll - a signer of the Declaration of Independence - broke ground for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The local entrepreneurs looked across the Atlantic to England and found an answer in the newly developed railroad. These new water routes promised to provide a commercial gateway to the West that would bypass Baltimore's thriving harbor and potentially hurl the city into an economic abyss. The threat came from the newly opened Erie Canal (see "Traveling the Erie Canal, 1836") and the proposed construction of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal that would parallel the Potomac River from Washington, DC to Cumberland, MD. In the 1820s the port of Baltimore was in danger. The Rough Riders Storm San Juan Hill, 1898 The United States Declares War on Spain, 1898 Leaving Home for the "Promised Land", 1894 Livingstone Discovers Victoria Falls, 1855Īndrew Carnegie Becomes a Capitalist, 1856 Dolley Madison Flees the White House, 1814 ![]()
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