We will also take pleasure here in laying before our readers the following
highly-interesting letter from Ross Willans, Esq., the inventor of the
friction-wheels in general use on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. It gives a
cooperative view of the performance of the locomotive-engine of the Alessrs.
Stephenson, of Eng land, contrasted with that of Mr. Cooper: Philip E. Thomas,
Esq.
"Sir: The performance of the working model of experimental
locomotive-engine of Mr. Cooper has been such today as to induce me to attempt
a hasty comparison of its dimensions and perform ances with some of the late
celebrated English locomotives, hav ing witnessed the grand locomotive
exhibition at Liverpool in October last, for the _500 purse, and many other
interesting ex periments by the Novelty and Rocket since that time. As Mr.
Cooper's engine has been got up in a temporary manner, and for experiment only,
and has been on the road but a few days, it will lee no more than justice to
make the comparison with some of the early experiments of the English engines.
I have, therefore, se lected the experiment of the Rocket in October, on the
result of which the premium of _500 was awarded to Mr. Stephenson, its builder,
for having produced the most efficient locomotive- engine, etc.
" The Rocket is professedly an eight horsepower when working at a
moderate speed, but, when working at high velocities, she is said to be more
than eight horsepower. Its furnace is two feet wide by three feet high; the
boiler is six feet long and three feet in diameter.
" The furnace is outside of the main boiler, and has an external
casing, between which and the fireplace there is a space of three inches filled
with water and communicating with the boiler. The heated air from the furnace
is circulated through the boiler by means of twenty-five pipes of two inches
internal diameter. It has two working cylinders of eight inches internal
diameter and fifteen inches in length each, or thereabouts. The road-wheels to
which the motion is communicated are four feet eight and a half inches in
diameter. Mr. Cooper's engine has but one working cylinder ot three and
one-fourth inches diameter, and fourteen and a half inch stroke of piston, with
a boiler proportionally small, or nearly so. The wheels of the engine to which
the motion is communi cated are two and a half feet in diameter, making it
necessary to gear with wheel and pinion to get speed, by which means a con
siderable consumption of power is experienced. You will perceive by the
foregoing that the capacity, or number of cubic inches, con tained in the
cylinder of Mr. Cooper's engine is only about one fourteenth part of that
contained in the two cylinders of the Rocket; consequently, it can only use
one-fourteenth the quantity of steam under the same pressure when each engine
is making the same number of strokes per minute, which is nearly the case when
the two engines are going at equal speed on the road. The total weight moved in
the experiment above alluded to by the Rocket, including her own weight, was
seventeen tons on the level road at an average speed of twelve and a half miles
the hour, thereby exhibiting (agreeably to Vignoles's late table of the power
of loco motive-engines) a little less than a six-horse engine.
" Mr. Cooper's engine has today moved a gross weight of four and a half
tons from the depot to Ellicott's Mills and back in the space of two hours and
ten minutes, which, as you are aware, the distance being twenty-six miles,
gives an average speed of twelve miles to the hour. As the engine returned with
its load to the same point whence it started, the acclivities and declivities
of the road were, of course, balanced; and at least as much time and power (if
not more) were required to traverse the whole distance as would have been on a
level road; therefore (agreeably to the aforesaid tables of M. Vignoles) Mr. Cooper's
engine exhibited an average force during the time it was running of 1.43 horse
power, or nearly one and a half, which is more than three times as much power
as the Rocket exhibited during the experiment above described, in proportion to
the cylindrical capacity of the respective engines. This, no doubt, originated
in a consider able degree from the steam being used in Mr. Cooper's engine at a
higher pressure than in the Rocket. We are, however, not able to come to any
very correct conclusion as to what extent this cause prevailed (Mr. Cooper's
steam-gauge not being accurately weighed), which prevents a more minute
comparison being made. It may be said that subsequent practice and experience
with the Rocket have enabled her constructor to produce more favorable results,
which is no doubt the case; but we have every reason to expect a similar effect
with regard to Mr. Cooper's engine, judging Mom what we have witnessed, each
exhibition of its power being, as yet, an improvement upon the one that
preceded it. It is, however, too small and too temporary in its construction to
expect a great deal, from the friction of the parts; the heat lost in a small
engine being much greater in proportion to the power than in a large one. But today’s
experiments must, I think, establish, beyond a doubt, the practicability of
using locomotive X steam-power on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad for the
conveyance of passengers and goods at such speed and with such safety (when
compared with other modes) as will be perfectly satisfactory to all parties
concerned, and with such economy as must be highly Battering to the interests
of the company. It has been doubted by many whether the unavoidable numerous
short curves on the line of your road and inclined planes would not render the
use of locomotive-power impracticable; but the velocity with which we have been
propelled today by steam-power round some of the shortest curves (to lvit, from
fifteen to eighteen miles per hour) without the slightest appearance of danger,
and with very little, if any, increased resistances as there was no appreciable
falling off in the rate of speed, and the slight diminution in speed in passing
up the inclined planes, some of which were nearly twenty feet to the mile,
must, I think, put an end to such doubts, and at once show the capability of
the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to do much more than was at first anticipated
or promised by its projectors and supporters.
As much as we have written and quoted respecting this first experimental
locomotive of Mr. Peter Cooper, we still cannot leave the subject without
giving our readers a description of that first trip, from the pen of H. B.
Latrobe, Esq., the counselor of the company, who was one of the passengers on
that occasion. In a lecture before the Maryland Institute, in 1868, Mr.
Latrobe, after speaking of the numerous starves that existed on the line of the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, thus continues:
"For a brief season it was believed that this feature of the early
American roads would prevent the use of locomotive-engines. The contrary was
demonstrated by a gentleman still living in an active and ripe old age, honored
and beloved, distinguished for his private worth and for his public benefactions;
one of those to whom wealth seems to have been granted by Providence that men
might know how wealth might be used to benefit one's fellow creatures. The
speaker refers to Mr. Peter Cooper, of New York. Mr. Cooper was satisfied that
steam might be adapted to the curved roads which he saw would be built in the
United States; and he came to Baltimore, which then possessed the only one on
which he could experiment to vindicate his belief, and he built an engine to
demonstrate his belief. The machine was not larger than the handcars used by
workmen to transfer themselves from place to place; and, as the speaker now
recalls its appearance, the only wonder is, that so apparently insignificant a
contrivance could ever have been regarded as competent to the smallest results.
glut Mr. Cooper was wiser than many of the wisest around him. His engine could
not have weighed a ton, but he saw in it a principle which the forty-ton
engines of today have but served to develop and demonstrate.
" The boiler of Mr. Cooper's engine was not as large as the kitchen
boiler attached to many a range in modern mansions; it was of about the same
diameter, but not much more than half as high. It stood upright in the car, and
was filled above the furnace, which occupied the lower section, with vertical
tubes. The cylinder was but three and a half inches in diameter, and speed was
gotten up by gearing. No natural draught could have been sufficient to keep up
steam in so small a boiler; and Mr. Cooper used, therefore, a blowing- apparatus,
driven by a drum attached to one of the cartwheels, over which passed a cord
that in its turn worked a pulley on the shaft of the blower. Among the first
buildings erected at WIount Clare was a large garage, in which railroad tracks
were laid at right angles with the road-track, communicating with the latter by
a turn- table, a Lilliputian affair indeed compared with the revolving
platforms, its successors, now in use.
" In this car-shop, Mr. Cooper had his engine, and here steam was first
raised; and it seems as though it were within the last week that the speaker
saw Mr. George Brown, the treasurer of the company, one of our most estimable
citizens, his father Mr. Alexander Browns Mr. Philip E. Thomas, and one or two
more, watch Mr. Cooper, as with his own hands he opened the throttle, admitted
the steam into the cylinder, and saw the crank-substitute operate successfully
with a clacking noise, while the machine moved slowly forward with some of the
bystanders, who had stepped upon it. And this was the first locomotive for
railroad purposes ever built in America; and this was the first transportation
of persons by steam that had ever taken place on this side of the Atlantic, on
an American-built locomotive.
" Mr. Cooper's success was such as to induce him to try a trip to
Ellicott's Mills, on which occasion an open car, the first used upon the road
already mentioned, having been attached to the engine, and filled with the
directors and some friends, the speaker among the rest, the first journey by
steam in America on an American locomotive was commenced. The trip was most
interesting. Tile curves were passed without difficulty, at a speed of fifteen
miles an hour; the grades were ascended with comparative ease; the day was
fine, the company in the highest spirits, and some excited gentlemen of the
party pulled out memorandum-books, and when at the highest speed, which was
eighteen miles an hour, wrote their names and some connected sentences, to
prove that even at that great velocity it was possible to do so. The
return-trip from the Mills, a distance of thirteen miles, was made in
fifty-seven minutes. This was in the summer of 1830, but the triumph of this
Tom Thumb engine was not altogether without a drawback. The great stage
proprietors of the day were Stockton and Stokes; and on that occasion a gallant
gray, of great beauty and power, was driven by them from town, attached to
another car on the second track for the company had begun by making two tracks
to the Lillsand met the engine at the Relay House, on its way back.
From this point it was determined to have a race home; and, the start being
even, away went horse and engine, the snort of the one and the puff of the
other keeping time and time.
" At first the gray had the best of it, for his steam would be applied
to the greatest advantage on the instant, while the engine had to wait until
the rotation of the wheels set the blower to work. The horse was perhaps a
quarter of a mile ahead, when the safety-valve of the engine lifted, and the
thin blue vapor issuing Mom it showed an excess of steam. The blower whistled,
the steam blew of in vapor clouds, the pace increased, the passengers shouted,
the engine gained on the horse, soon it lapped him the silk was placed the race
was neck and neck, nose and nose then the engine passed the horse, and a great
hurrah hailed the victory. But it was not repeated, for just at this time, when
the gray master w as about giving up, the band which drove the pulley, which
moved the blower, slipped from the drum, the safety-valve ceased to scream, and
the engine, for want of breath, began to wheeze and pant. In vain Bier. Cooper,
who was his own engineer anal fireman, lacerated his hands in attempting to
replace the band upon the wheel; in vain he tried to urge the fire with light
wood: the horse gained on the machine and passed it, and, although the band was
presently replaced, and steam again did its best, the horse was too far ahead
to be overtaken, and came in the winner of the race. But the real victory was
with Mr. Cooper, notwithstanding. He had held fast to the faith that was in
him, and had demonstrated its truth beyond peradventure. All honor to his name
! In a patent-case, tried many years afterward, the boiler of Mr. Cooper's
engine became, in some connection which has been forgotten, important as a
piece of evidence. It was hunted for and found among some old rubbish at Mount
Clair. It was difficult to imagine that it had ever generated steam enough to
drive a coffee- mill, much less that it had performed the feats here narrated.
In the d' Irtillerie at Paris there are preserved old cannon, contemporary,
almost, with Crecy and Poictiers. In some great museum of internal improvement,
and some such will at a future day be gotten up, Mr. Peter Cooper's boiler should
hold an equally prominent and far more honored place; for while the old weapons
of destruction were ministers of mall's wrath, the contrivance we have
described was one of the most potential instruments in malting available, in
America, that vast system which unites remote people, and promotes that peace
on earth and goodwill to men which angels have proclaimed."