HISTORICAL.

To begin a subject properly you must begin at the beginning.

Boys who don't like history need not read this chapter, for in it we tell how the steam engine began, and if it never had begun, you know, there would never have been any engineers, nor any necessity for writing this book.

For two or three generations we have had the story of James Watt told us; how when a boy and watching his mother's tea-kettle one day he saw the steam lift the lid, and that suggested the idea that if a little steam could lift the lid of a kettle, a great deal would lift still heavier weights and revolutionize the world.

Now they tell us that Watt was not the first one to have this idea by several, that it was first suggested by the Marquis of Worcester, in his book called the "Century of Inventions," as "a way to drive up water by fire," A. D. 1663.

This was about a hundred years before Watt came on deck, but the marquis never put his idea into practice, and Watt did, so to the latter the credit belongs.

Here are a few dates:

Watt's invention of the separate condenser, 1765; Watt's first patent, 1769; Watt's first working engine introduced into a manufactory, 1775; first steam engine erected in Ireland, 1791; first steamboat run on the Hudson, 1797; first steamboat abroad, 1801.

First regular steamboat ever run was from Albany to New York. The name of the boat was the North River, her builder was Robert Fulton, and she made the passage in 33 hours.

The first railroad was built in England, in 1811.

The first ocean steamer was the Savannah, an American craft of 350 tons, which sailed from New York for Liverpool, July 15, 1819, making the voyage in 26 days.

Such were the early beginnings of steam.

There are three principal kinds of engineers, locomotive, steamboat and stationary.

In this little book we propose to deal mainly with the duties of a locomotive engineer.

If one is a good locomotive engineer he can easily learn to manage the engine of a steamboat; and if he is skilled in either of these particulars he will have no difficulty with the biggest stationary engine ever built.

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.

The boiler was fastened on the front of the car, which moved on three wheels—the steam acted only on the foremost wheel.

The speed of Cugnot's locomotive was about three miles an hour. On the first trial it ran into a building and was broken to pieces.

In 1784 the famous Watt patented a steam locomotive engine in England, which, however, never was put to use.

In 1802, Trevethick and Vivian patented a locomotive, which, in 1804, traveled at the rate of five miles an hour, drawing behind it a load of ten tons of coal.

Several other "traveling engines," as they were then styled, were invented by other mechanical engineers with only moderate success, it being reserved for Stephenson, in 1811, to build the first locomotive that should prove of practical use.

About this time a man named Thomas Gray, of Nottingham, England, brought upon himself the contempt and ridicule of the whole English nation by pushing forward the idea of the locomotive in connection with coal mines.

127,000,000 tons were carried recently in one year, on English railroads alone. What a tough time this parliamentary slow coach would have had to swallow all that!

The first practical locomotive in the world—Stephenson's invention, was Old No. 1, which pulled the first regular train on the Stockton and Darlington R. R. on Tuesday, September 27, 1825.

Old No. 1 cost $2,500 to build. It was a very clumsy affair; nothing better, in fact, than a big boiler on four wheels, which were moved by great levers worked by pistons from the top of the machine.

No sooner had the Stockton and Darlington R. R. proved itself a success than all England was in arms against it. Here are some of the absurd objections urged against railroads, taken from the newspapers of the day.

Steam horses were "contrary to nature;" they were "damaging to good morals and religion;" the smoke of the locomotive would "obscure the sun, and thereby ruin the crops." Farmyards and farmhouses would be burned by their sparks; the clanking, puffing locomotive would have such an effect on the mind as to drive people crazy (this was backed up by certificates from a dozen doctors); locomotives would cause springs to dry up and fields to become sterile; they would create great chasms by constantly running over the same ground.

What twaddle!

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.