The history of the first locomotives in America. From original ...

LOCOMOTIVE-WOKKS. 229
The locomotive is truly tlie king of machines and a
permanent realization of the genii of the Eastern fable,
whose supernatural powers were at the conxmand of man.
When the next fifty years have rolled around, how little
wUl men think of what we now call distance ! The
term will he obsolete in Our vocabulary, and become
entirely forgotten.
CHAPTER XLII.
LOOOMOTnrE-WOEKS.
When we contemplate the progress made in locomotives
within the last forty years, how forcibly comes
to our mind the old but often the very truthful saying,
" From small beginnings great results sometimes turn
out !
"
Let us look back to the year 1830, to Mr. Peter
Cooper's experimental locomotive, the " Tom Thumb,"
and in the same year to Colonel MUler's contract to
construct, for the South Carolina Eailroad, a locomotive
to perform at the rate of ten miles an hour, and
draw fifteen tons' weight. This required, for construction,
several months at the West Point Foundery
Works. None of the beautiful machinery of the
present day, for every department of mechanical labor,
was then dreamed of, and the only tools at command
were the rasp, the anvil, and sledge. Compare that
work with the following description of one of the
largest locomotive-works of the present day, and we are,
as it were, lost in wonder and amazement. It is from
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