Steam Locomotive
While living in Kentucky, Fitch continued to work on steam engine ideas. He built two models, one of which was lost in a fire in Bardstown. The other was found in the attic of his daughter's house in Ohio in 1849. The model still exists at the Ohio Historical Society Museum in Columbus. In the 1950s, experts from the Smithsonian Museum examined it and concluded that it was "the prototype of a practical land-operating steam engine," meant to operate on tracks – in other words, a steam locomotive.
In 1802, the Englishman Richard Trevithick invented a full-size steam locomotive that, in 1804, hauled the world's first locomotive-hauled railway train, and within a short time the British invention led to the development of actual railways. Americans began importing English locomotives and copying them.
Read more about this topic: John Fitch (inventor)
Famous quotes containing the words steam and/or locomotive:
““If Steam has done nothing else, it has at least added a whole new Species to English Literature ... the booklets—the little thrilling romances, where the Murder comes at page fifteen, and the Wedding at page forty—surely they are due to Steam?”
“And when we travel by electricity—if I may venture to develop your theory—we shall have leaflets instead of booklets, and the Murder and the Wedding will come on the same page.””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the box house hills and cry.”
—Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)