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]

But at this period the world began to hear of railways. A well-known merchant of Baltimore, returning from England, described with enthusiasm the coal trains, drawn by the cumbrous ante-Stephenson engines, which he had seen there. The idea of a tramway (with or without steam motors) found ready acceptance in a community both enterprising and desperate. A town meeting, held in 1826, to consider Western communications, resulted in an application to the Maryland legislature, and the incorporation, in March, 1827, of the Baltimore and Ohio,—the first railroad company thus created in the United States for purposes of general transportation,—the leader of that vast multitude of similar enterprises, the history of which is the history of our nation's marvelous commercial progress. By the legislative charter, the city of Baltimore and the State of Maryland were authorized to subscribe to the company's stock.

In the address already cited, Mr. Latrobe, an eye-witness, says of the scenes which followed:—

"Then came a scene which almost beggars description. By this time, public excitement had gone beyond fever heat and reached the boiling point. Everybody wanted stock. The number of shares subscribed were to be apportioned, if the limit of the capital should be exceeded; and every one set about obtaining proxies. Parents subscribed in the names of their children, and paid the dollar on each share that the rules prescribed. Before even a survey had been made, the possession of stock in any quantity was regarded as a provision for old age; and great was the scramble to obtain it. The excitement in Baltimore roused public attention elsewhere; and a railroad mania began to pervade the land."

The proposed railroad was to pass through Mr. Cooper's Canton property, which he had already begun to develop, "so that it should pay the taxes," by building upon it charcoal kilns, after a design of his own, with the purpose of turning the forest into charcoal, and, by means of this fuel, smelting the iron ore which the land contained. What was the immediate commercial outcome of this enterprise is not recorded. Mr. Cooper's characteristic recollection, more than sixty years later, was that, "with the exception of a dangerous explosion," which nearly cost him his life, the charcoal kilns were "a great success!"

But the great value of the property was expected to be realized through the new railroad; and this expectation suffered a serious blow when the horse cars failed to pay expenses; the operation of the line was suspended; the directors lost faith in the enterprise; and many of the principal stockholders declared that they would rather lose the investment made so far than "throw good money after bad." For the hope that the new agency of steam might help them out was blighted by the news from England that Stephenson had said that steam could not be used as a motive power on a road having curves of less than 900 feet radius; and this road had, at Point of Rocks, a necessary curve with a radius of only 150 feet!

The situation presented exactly the sort of challenge calculated to arouse the courage and ingenuity of Peter Cooper, besides appealing to another of his personal characteristics, namely, his undying and unalterable faith in his own ideas and conclusions, whether they had achieved recognition or not. He could lay aside a scheme which had not found immediate and successful application, and turn his attention, with undiminished vivacity, to something else; but he never owned to a real defeat. And now the problem presented at Baltimore seemed to him a providential call for his intervention. If the English engineers could not run their locomotives around sharp curves, it must be because they persisted in using the vicious crank, which he had already superseded by his (temporarily unappreciated) invention! And, with unshaken faith in that device, he informed the Baltimore and Ohio directors (to use the words in which, long afterwards, he told the story) that he thought he "could knock together a locomotive which would get a train around the Point of Rocks."

It is a curious circumstance that, ever since that day, the characteristic difference between English and American locomotives has been the ability of the latter to pass curves of shorter radius than the former can safely follow. The reason, as all railway engineers know, is that the usual English construction involves a rigid frame, while the American has a movable truck or "bogie" under the front part of the engine. This solution of the problem was not reached by Mr. Cooper. What he, in fact, accomplished was simply a piece of audacity, which encouraged the enterprise of his countrymen, by proving that the dictum of limited experience abroad was not conclusive. Two features of his Baltimore experiment were characteristic of him. The first was that he undertook it, not merely in order to vindicate his invention, but to effect a practical result, namely, to make his land speculation pay. And the second was that when he found it difficult to operate his pet invention in this experiment, he laid it aside at once,—without losing an atom of faith in it, but also without persisting (as a typical enthusiast would have done) in risking upon the vindication of his personal opinion in one matter the success of another undertaking, more immediately important.

Mr. Cooper's own recollection of this event deserves to be told in his own words. He says:[4]—

"I came back to New York for a little bit of a brass engine of mine—about one horse power (it had a 3½ in. cylinder and 14 in. stroke)—and carried it back to Baltimore. I got some boiler iron and made a boiler about as high as an ordinary wash boiler; and then how to connect the boiler with the engine I didn't know. I couldn't find any iron pipes. The fact was that there were none for sale in this country. So I took two muskets, broke off the wooden parts, and used the barrels for tubing, one on one side and the other on the other side of the boiler. I went into a coach-maker's shop and made this locomotive, which I called the Tom Thumb, because it was so insignificant. I didn't intend it for actual service, but only to show the directors what could be done. I meant to test two things: first, I meant to show that short turns could be made; and secondly, that I could get rotary motion without the use of a crank. I effected both of these things very nicely. I changed the movement from a reciprocating to a rotary motion.

"I got up steam one Saturday night. The president of the road and two or three other gentlemen were there. We got on the truck and went out two or three miles. All were delighted; for it opened new possibilities for the railroad. I put up the locomotive for the night in a shed, and invited the company to ride to Ellicott's Mills on Monday. Monday morning, what was my chagrin to find that some scamp had been there, and chopped off all the copper from the engine,—doubtless in order to sell it to some junk dealer!

"It took me a week or more to repair the machine; then some one got in and broke a piece out of the wheel, in experimenting with it; and then two wheels, cast one after the other, were damaged by the carelessness of the turner. I was thoroughly disgusted and discouraged; but, being determined that I would not be balked entirely, I changed the engine so that the power could be applied through the ordinary connection with a crank.[5]

"At last all was ready; and, on a Monday, we started,—six in the engine, and thirty-six on the car which I took in tow. We went up an average grade of eighteen feet to the mile; made the thirteen miles to Ellicott's Mills in one hour and twelve minutes; and came back in fifty-seven minutes. The result of that experiment was that the bonds of the railroad company were sold at once, and there was no longer any doubt as to the success of the road."

The Tom Thumb continued for several weeks to make trips to Ellicott's Mills; and on one occasion (September 18, 1830) ran a race from Riley House into Baltimore (about nine miles) with a light car, drawn on a parallel track by a gray horse noted for speed and endurance. The contest was planned by the stagecoach proprietors of Baltimore, with the view of demonstrating that nothing could be gained by the substitution of steam for horse power on the railroad. The gray horse won the race, but not until after the Tom Thumb had passed him, and only by reason of a temporary breakdown of the machine, which caused a delay too great to be subsequently made up. Mr. Cooper's characteristic recollection of the event, as given fifty-five years later, was that "they tried a little race one day, but it didn't amount to anything. It was rather funny; and the locomotive got out of gear."

Mr. Latrobe says of the Tom Thumb:—

"The machine was not larger than the hand cars used by workmen to transfer themselves from place to place; and as the speaker now recalls its appearance, the only wonder is that so apparently insignificant a contrivance should ever have been regarded as competent to the smallest results. But Mr. Cooper was wiser than many of the wisest around him. His engine could not have weighed a ton; but he saw in it a principle which the forty-ton engines of to-day have but served to develop and demonstrate. The boiler of Mr. Cooper's engine was not as large as the kitchen boiler attached to many a range in modern mansions. It was of about the same diameter, but not much more than half as high. It stood upright in the car, and was filled above the furnace, which occupied the lower section, with vertical tubes. The cylinder was but three and one half inches in diameter; and speed was got up by gearing. No natural draft could have been sufficient to get up steam in so small a boiler; and Mr. 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. The contrivance for dispensing with a crank, though its general appearance is recollected, the speaker cannot describe with any accuracy; nor is it important,—it came to nothing....

"In a patent case, tried many years afterwards, the boiler of Mr. Cooper's engine became, in some connection which has been forgotten, important as a piece of evidence. It was hunted for, and found among some old rubbish at Mount Clare. It was difficult to imagine that it had even generated steam enough to drive a coffee mill, much less that it had performed the feats here narrated."

After this experimental demonstration, the Tom Thumb retired into honorable but obscure repose in its maker's warehouse at New York, from which it emerged, fifty years later, to take part in the centennial celebration of the beginning of the commercial history of Baltimore (that place having been made a port of entry in 1780). According to a contemporary report of the festival, "in the vast procession, Mr. Cooper and his little Tom Thumb locomotive were the two most conspicuous objects, and received all the honors which could be paid by a quarter of a million of enthusiastic people."