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50 Chronology
Chronology
1769 James Watt’s practical steam engine causes a radical makeover in manufacturing during the Industrial Revolution, increasing productivity and transforming transportation. The Scottish mechanical engineer declares exclusive rights to his design this year.
1804 Richard Trevithick completes the first full-scale railway steam locomotive, which traverses the rails of the Penydarren Ironworks tramway in south Wales.
1809 Thomas Leiper constructs the
first permanent tramway in America. The horse-drawn, three-quarter-mile wooden tramway links his quarries on Crum Creek in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, to a boat landing on Ridley Creek in the same county. It gives birth to freight transportation via the rails.
1815 Col. John Stevens of Hoboken, New Jersey, has his application to build a railroad from New Brunswick to Trenton, New Jersey, approved, but due to lack of funds the project never materializes.
1825 George Stephenson, an English civil engineer, develops the world’s first public railway to use steam locomotives. His first locomotive, designed in 1814, was intended to haul coal.
1830 The Best Friend of Charleston, widely considered the first steam locomotive built entirely in America, has its maiden voyage on Christmas Day at Charleston, South Carolina. It is the first passenger train service in the United States to establish a regular schedule. By this date, 23 miles of railroad tracks have been laid in the United States.
The Oregon Trail route was later followed by the transcontinental railroads.
1831 In England, the locomotive John Bull is built by Robert Stephenson for
the Camden & Amboy Railroad, which outfits it with lead wheels. Two years after it makes its initial run in November at Bordentown, New Jersey, the John Bull penetrates regular passenger service.
The South Carolina Canal & Railroad Company carries the first U.S. mail via rail, and the locomotive DeWitt Clinton, of the Mohawk & Hudson Railway, pulls the first steam train in New York State in the same year.
1833 America’s first railroad tunnel, the Staple Bend Tunnel, is constructed. This combined railroad and incline system serves the Allegheny Portage Railroad, east of Johnstown, Philadelphia. It reduces
the travel time from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh from three weeks to four days.
Andrew Jackson boards a train and travels between Ellicott’s Mills and Baltimore,
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