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.
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.
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.
The work of the different engineers differs only in detail, not in kind.
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.