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

STEPHENSON'S ENGINE. 53
.was a chain wMcli rolled over indented wheels on the
centre of each axle, and so arranged that the two pair
of wheels were effectually coupled and made to keep
pace with each other. This did well for a while, but
the chains soon proved troublesome, and were abandoned
for the new plan of connecting the front and
hind wheels together by rods outside of the wheels,
instead of rods and cranks inside, as at first. This
method completely answered the purpose, and is in use
at the present day.
Although many other improvements were afterward
suggested to the fertile mind of Mr. Stephenson, and
introduced in the machinery of the locomotive Blucher,
yet, as a mechanical construction, it may be considered
as the type of the present successful locomotive system.
Mr. Stephenson was now left alone in locomotive
experiments and improvements: all the other experi-
mentalists before him quitted the field of that kind of
enterprise^ and all their works in the shape of machines
were thrown away and entirely abandoned.
Eailways, as we have before stated, had been in suc-
cessful operation for many years, in the transportation
of coal and mineral ores from the mines to the places of
shipment. The idea had never been suggested to the
mind of any one, or had never, at least, been advocated,
to use them for general purposes of traffic, or, as at the
present time, for the' transportation of goods, wares,
merchandise, produce, or for the transportation of passen-
gers from one city to another, untU about the year 1800,
as we before stated, by a Mr. Thomas, who introduced
the subject before the Literary and Philosophical Society
of Newcastle, and a few years after by a Mr. Edgeworth,
and even then no other power was thought or dreamed
of but the horse-power then in use upon all the tram-
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