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HOW TO BECOME AN ENGINEER. 5
has done more than any other one thing to revolutionize the
world.
Be very sure that the locomotive, with its pistons, its spin-
ning drive wheels, its polished steel and shining brass, did
not come into existence all at once.
> Byno means. Like everything else in the way of mechan-
ical invention that attains greatness, the locomotive had an
‘jnsignificant beginning to reach which we shail 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 Tole-
brook Dale, England, a spot: celebrated for having the first
iron bridge i in the world—where a small ircn road was con-
structed 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 rail-
road 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 1s the custom of English writers to ignore Cugnot’s in-
vention, and claim for themselves the origin of the locomo-
have but that is only. a pleasant. way the English usually
ave.
Cugnot’s locomotive ‘actually existed though, and was un-.
doubtedly 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 fore-
‘ntost 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 famons Watt patented a steam locomotiive en-
gine in England, which, however, sever 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 prac-
tical use.
About this time a man named Thomas Gray, of Notting-
ham, England, brought upon himself the contempt and rid-