So it happened that George
Stephenson came into fame and has ever since lived in popular
memory as the father of the locomotive. There was nothing new in
his Rocket, except his own workmanship. Like Robert Fulton, he
appears to have succeeded where others failed because he was a
sounder engineer, or a better combiner of sound principles into a
working, whole, than any of his rivals.
Across the Atlantic came the news of Stephenson's remarkable
success. And by this time railroads were beginning in various
parts of the United States: the Mohawk and Hudson, from Albany to
Schenectady; the Baltimore and Ohio; the Charleston and Hamburg
in South Carolina; the Camden and Amboy, across New Jersey.
Horses, mules, and even sails, furnished the power for these
early railroads. It can be imagined with what interest the owners
of these roads heard that at last a practicable locomotive was
running in England.
This news stimulated the directors of the Baltimore and Ohio to
try the locomotive. They had not far to go for an experiment, for
Peter Cooper, proprietor of the Canton Iron Works in Baltimore,
had already designed a small locomotive, the Tom Thumb. This was
placed on trial in August, 1830, and is supposed to have been the
first American-built locomotive to do work on rails, though
nearly coincident with it was the Best Friend of Charleston,
built by the West Point Foundry, New York, for the Charleston and
Hamburg Railroad.
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