Full text of "The Story of locomotion"

THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION

THE-STORY OF

LOCOMOTION

REVISED BY

W. J. WILTSHIRE, B.A.(OxoN)

FULL Y ILL USTRA TED

HODDER AND STOUGHTON

LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
1913

Scries

The Story of JU ? / <5

Primitive Man. By EDWARD CLODD.
Germ Life: Bacteria. By H. W. CONN. \^ +*

The British Race. By JOHN MUNRO.
Thought and Feeling. By F. RYLAND.
Geographical Discovery. By JOSEPH JACOBS,/ & *
A Piece of Coal. By E. A. MARTIN, F.G.S. -7/3
Bird Life. By W. P. PYCRAFT, F.Z.S.
The Earth in Past Ages. By H. G. SEELEY, F.R.S.
Extinct Civilizations of the East. By R. E.

ANDERSON, M.A.

The Stars. By G. F. CHAMBERS, F.R.A.S.
The Solar System. By G. F. CHAMBERS, F.R.A.S.
The Mind. By Prof. J. M. BALDWIN.
The Chemical Elements. By M. M. PATTISON

MUIR, M.A.

Forest and Stream. By JAMES RODWAY, F.L.S.
Architecture. By P. L. WATERHOUSE.
Religions. By the Rev. E. D. PRICE, F.G.S.
Plant Life. By GRANT ALLEN.
Animal Life. By W. B. LINDSAY.
The Cotton Plant. By F. WILKINSON, F.G.S.
Eclipses. By G. F. CHAMBERS, F.R.A.S.
Electricity. By J. MUNRO.
The Weather. By G. F. CHAMBERS, F.R.A.S.
Wild Flowers. By Prof. G. HENSLOW.
Books. By G. B. RAWLINGS.
The Empire. By E. SALMON.
The Atmosphere. By DOUGLAS ARCHIBALD.
The Potter. By C. F. BINNS.
Life in the Seas. By SIDNEY J. HICKSON, F.R.S.
The Grain of Wheat. By WILLIAM C. EDGAR.
Alpine Climbing. By FRANCIS GRIBBI.E.
Wireless Telegraphy. By A. T. STORY.
Reptile Life. By W. P. PYCRAFT, F.Z.S.
British Trade. By JAMES BURNLEY.
Ancient Egypt. By ROBINSON SOUTTAR.
Ice in the Past and Present. By W. A. BREND.
The Wanderings of Atoms. By M. M. PATTISON

MUIR, M.A.

Life's Mechanism. By H. W. CONN.
The Alphabet. By EDWARD CLODD.
Art in the British Isles. By J. ERNEST PHYTHIAN.
King Alfred. By Sir WALTER BESANT.
Pish Life. By W. P. PYCRAFT, F.Z.S.
Euclid. By W. B. FRANKLAND.
Lost England. By BECKLES WILLSON.
Alchemy, or The Beginnings of Chemistry. By M.

M. PATTISON MUIR.

The Army. By Captain OWEN WHEELER.
Locomotion. Revised by W. J. WILTSHIRE, B.A.
The Atlantic Cable. By CHARLES BRIGHT, F.R.S.E.
The Extinct Civilizations of the West. By R. E.

ANDERSON, M.A.

LONDON : HODDER & STOUGHTON

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

A COMPARISON GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY COM-
PANY'S LOCOMOTIVES OF 1912 AND 1872 Frontispiece

PAGE

THE EARLIEST HACKNEY COACH 14

THE CABRIOLET 18

EARLY STAGE COACH 21

OLD ENGLISH COACH "THE FLYING COACH" . . 24
GLOBULAR-SHAPED MAIL COACH USED ON THE CON-
TINENT A CENTURY AGO 27

PASSENGER ENGINE BY STEPHENSON .... 33

THE EXPERIMENT, FIRST RAILWAY PASSENGER COACH,

1825 . 35

THE ROCKET 37

THE ROYAL GEORGE 38

LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER RAILWAY FIRST CLASS,

1830 41

LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER RAILWAY SECOND AND

THIRD CLASS, 1831 . . . . . . 41

THE " COMET "... 45

STEAM v. HORSES 47

THE " GREAT WESTERN " 49

THE " DEUTSCHLAND " 61

R.M.S. "MAURETANIA" ...... 64

THE LUXURY OF OCEAN TRAVEL THE LOUNGE ON THE

" LUSITANIA " 66

THE " MAURETANIA'S " WRITING-ROOM AND LIBRARY . 67

A DILIGENCE 72

FACSIMILE TIME-TABLE, 1839 74

^52878

6 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

THE ROYAL TRAIN IN 1843, LONDON AND BIRMINGHAM 77

GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY, "THE FLYING DUTCH-
MAN" 80

INTERIOR OF A THIRD-CLASS DINING CAR, MIDLAND

RAILWAY 85

INTERIOR OF DINING CAR ON THE GRAND TRUNK RAIL-
WAY OF CANADA 94

FIRST ELECTRIC RAILWAY 99

EARLIEST ADVERTISEMENT OF THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH 111

"THE DANDY-HORSE" 133

JAMES'S STEAM CARRIAGE 147

STEAM ROAD COACH, 1833 149

F. HILL'S STEAM CARRIAGE RUNNING BETWEEN LONDON

AND BIRMINGHAM, 1839-1843 .... 151

AN EARLY CARRIAGE DRIVEN BY GAS .... 153

DAIMLER MOTOR CAR OF 1903 158

MOTOR CAR EXPLAINED 159

THE LATEST TYPE OF DAIMLER CAR (1913 MODEL) . 165

AN AIRSHIP DESIGNED BY FRANCIS LANA OF BARCE-
LONA, 1670 174

AN EARLY AERIAL VOYAGE 177

THE TRIUMPH OF SANTOS-DUMONT. How HE ROUNDED

THE EIFFEL TOWER .196

THE ZEPPELIN DIRIGIBLE " HANSA," ONE OF COUNT

ZEPPELIN'S LARGEST PASSENGER AIRSHIPS . 197

THE PASSENGER CAR OF THE " HANSA " . . .199

A ' ' SHORT " BIPLANE 206

THE HANDLEY-PAGE AUTOMATIC STABILITY MONOPLANE 208

THE FIRST OMNIBUS 212

PATENT SAFETY CAB . . . , . . . .213

THE THAMES TUNNEL 215

ELEVATED RAILWAY, NEW YORK 219

MOVING PLATFORM, PARIS EXHIBITION, 1900 . 229

PREFACE.

IT has been said that "when the nineteenth
century takes its place with the other centuries
in the chronological charts of the future, it will,
if it need a symbol, almost inevitably have as
that symbol, a steam engine running upon a
railway."*

The characteristic material problem of the
nineteenth century was rapid locomotion, and
it promises to be one of the most prominent
sciences of the twentieth. To it is consecrated
to-day more capital, labour and ingenuity than
to all the other sciences together. It is an
end to which the greatest inventors and most
skilful engineers have consecrated their talents.
Whether it be in the form of the railway
steam or electric the steamship, the telegraph,
with or without wires, the telephone, the electric
tram, the automobile, ever great and still greater
velocity of locomotion or communication is the
goal in view. And what victories have been
won over the sluggish forces of nature ! what
obstacles overcome ! The whole story is so
modern, that like Electricity and Photography
we can trace its beginnings not further back
than the time of our grandsires.

* H. G. Wells : Anticipations.

8 PREFACE.

Wonderful as has been the story of locomotion
in the past, and marvellous as the progress has
been from decade to decade, the changes of the
present time are even more remarkable. Glancing
back over a period of but ten short years, one
feels as though some mighty magician had been
at work, calling into existence new forces, new
methods, and even a new population ; for
wherever the means of locomotion are facilitated,
there do we find people thronging in ever-in-
creasing numbers. What the next ten years
may bring forth no man can foretell with any
degree of certainty. We can only patiently wait
and continue to ask ourselves whether it is pos-
sible for the wonders that are to come to equal
those of the years that have gone. Meanwhile,
a study of the history of this fascinating sub-
ject cannot fail to prove both interesting and
instructive.

In the following pages an attempt has been
made to give not only the history of the latest
developments of locomotion, but also briefly to
indicate the means by which results so remarkable
have been achieved.

9 9

THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

CHAPTER I.

ECONOMY of time was a virtue so little practised
by our ancestors that the innovator who proposed
to effect a saving of it was regarded as either fool
or revolutionary. To a race which lived in the
constant prospect of eternity this life at best was
but a "fleeting show," and any attempt to
multiply its moments was frowned upon as
vanity.

An idea of seventeenth century celerity may be
gained from the fact that in 1609 to send a letter
from York to Oxford and obtain a reply required
a full month. Even after the establishment of
the post in 1660, correspondence was but little
expedited. When coaches were introduced it
was roundly declared that they would ruin the
country ; and we find in one chronicler a eulogy
of the old waggons of Master Stow's day which
did not jog along the highway at a speed of four
miles an hour, but travelled easily, "without
jolting men's bodies or hurrying them along."
The general advantages of rapid transit, on its
commercial side, were not even dimly perceived.
The new stage-coaches were condemned by the

iU , THE SliORY -OF LOCOMOTION.

country towns because they would enable London
to avail itself of a wider circle of supply and
demand, and so injure their trade. In 1673, it
took a full week of travel to reach Exeter from
London (the fare, by the way, being 40s. in
summer and 45s. in winter, which was also the
tariff for the journey from the capital to Chester
or York). In 1678, six days were required by a
six-horse coach to perform the journey between
Edinburgh and Glasgow and return. Before the
close of the seventeenth century a similar vehicle
demanded two days for the journey from London
to Cambridge, fifty-seven miles ; while another
half century was to elapse before the ordinary
journey to Oxford required less time. All
travelling was done by daylight : when night
journeys were first introduced in 1740, there
were many who foreboded ruin to the proprietors
on account of the innovation.

One who thought of leaving by coach from
Edinburgh for the British capital in the middle
of the eighteenth century, planned the journey
months in advance, consulted his lawyer and
made his will. Such an adventure was not to be
embarked upon lightly, as is testified by an ad-
vertisement in the Edinburgh Courant for 1758,
which states that, " with God's permission," the
coach would " go in ten days in summer and
twelve in winter." This would now suffice to
carry a traveller from Edinburgh to Chicago or
to Cairo, with two or three days to spare. An
idea of what the enterprising projectors meant
by a " flying-coach " may be derived from an
announcement in 1765 that such a vehicle,

THE TURNPIKE ACT. 11

drawn by eight horses, would travel from
London to Dover, seventy-one miles, in a single
day.

But we must remember that speed in transit
was in those early days dependent on something
more than the mere will of the coachman or coach-
owner. The condition of the roads, not merely
in this kingdom but throughout Europe gene-
rally, made rapid locomotion impossible. For
centuries most of the roads were mere tracks
across the face of the country, patched with rude
paving in the muddy places and " very noisome
and tedious to travel on and dangerous to all
passengers and carriages," to quote the statute
act for the repair of the highways passed in
Mary's reign.

We may say that the first effort in the direction
of real improvement dates from the passing of
the Turnpike Act in 1633, which premised that
portions of the Great North Eoad leading from
the capital to York and Scotland were "very
ruinous and become almost impassible, insomuch
that it is become very dangerous to all His
Majesty's liege people to pass that way." The
toll-gate is an institution that began in the reign
of Charles II. the first turnpike toll being
erected on the road running from Hertfordshire
to the counties of Huntingdon and Cambridge.
Travellers, of course, at first resisted the innova-
tion, which was designed for their benefit ;
improvement was slow and the roads of England
and Scotland a century later were but little
bettered; indeed, some of them grew worse.
We could hardly require better testimony as to

12 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

their actual condition in 1770 than is furnished
by the celebrated Arthur Young in his " Tour."
Speaking of a highway in Lancashire, he declares :
"I know not, in the whole range of language,
terms sufficiently expressive to describe this
infernal road. To look over a map and perceive
that it is the principal one, not only to some
towns, but even whole counties, one would
naturally conclude it to be at least decent ; but
let me most seriously caution all travellers who
may accidentally purpose to travel this terrible
county to avoid it as they would the devil, for a
thousand to one but they break their necks or their
limbs by overthrows or breakings down. They
will here meet with ruts which I measured, four
feet deep, and floating with mud, only from a
wet summer what, therefore, must it be after
a winter? The only mending it receives in
places is the tumbling in some loose stones,
which serve no other purpose but jolting a
carriage in the most unbearable manner. These
are not merely opinions, but facts ; for I actually
passed three carts broken down in these eighteen
miles of execrable memory." Young found else-
where in the North other roads equally bad,
where two miles an hour would doubtless have
been performed with difficulty.

When the original Government postal system
began with headquarters just out of Eastcheap
the mails between London and Edinburgh
took three days. Charles I. having determined
in 1635 to mend the dilatory and imperfect com-
munication between the two capitals, established
" a running post or two, to run night and day,

FIRST STAGE COACH. 13

between Edinburgh and London, to go thither
and come back again in six days." With the
downfall of the monarchy this service ended, and
in 1649 we find the city of London inaugurating
a northern post of its own with a regular staff
of runners and postmasters.

The authority of a single postal system managed
by the Government was finally settled by an Act
passed in 1656. The preamble showed that " the
erecting of one General Post Office for the speedy
conveying and re-carrying of letters by post to
and from all places within England, Scotland and
Ireland, and into several parts beyond the seas,
hath been and is the best means, not only to
maintain a certain and constant intercourse of
trade and commerce between all the said places,
to the great benefit of the people of these nations,
but also to convey the public despatches, and to
discover and prevent many dangerous and wicked
designs which have been and are daily contrived
against the peace and welfare of this Common-
wealth, the intelligence whereof cannot well be
communicated but by letter of escript."

In 1658 the first stage-coach between London
and Edinburgh was put on the road, setting out
once a fortnight, and taking nearly that time in
transit. The ordinary method of travelling then,
and for centuries, was on horseback or on foot.
Coaches had been, it is true, introduced in 1553,
but they were little used in the country, where,
in fact, the fearful condition of the roads would
have restricted their use.

In London and all the other large towns the

width of the streets prevented the use

14 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

carriages ; the Sedan chair, borne by porters,
being the polite mode of progression. In
Charles I.'s reign horses were occasionally used
as bearers, thus forming the earliest idea of the
"Hackney coach."
In 1662 there were only six stage-coaches in

THE EAELIEST HACKNEY COACH.

the whole kingdom, and even this number was
considered by some of the slow-going conservative
citizens as just half-a-dozen too many.

Matters were to be yet worse before they were
bettered, for with the establishment of the
General Post Office at the Eestoration a lower
standard of despatch prevailed, and six days,
instead of three, were consumed by the mails
between London and Edinburgh. Such a retro-
gression aroused Nottingham, York and other

"POST HASTE" SPEED. 15

towns to protest, and as a consequence the King's
post became accelerated to " three and a half or
four days," which was a rate much slower than
that which had prevailed thirty years before.
Nevertheless, it must be remembered that the
volume of mail business between the two capitals
was very scanty, a hint of which truth we may
obtain from the fact that, on one occasion in
1745, the mail brought only a single letter from
the South for the British Linen Company. On
another day in the same year only one was re-
ceived in London for Sir William Pulteney, the
banker. With Edinburgh four days from London
it was on a par with Constantinople at the present
day.

Early in the eighteenth century, when the
mails were conveyed on horseback or in light
carts, and the robbery of the mail was one of the
most common of crimes, the rate of travelling
did not often exceed four miles an hour. There
is still to be seen a time-bill for the year 1717,
addressed "to the several postmasters between
London and East Grinstead." It is headed
" Haste, haste, post haste ! " from which the
casual reader might gather that extraordinary
expedition would be observed. The mails, we
learn, departed " from the letter-office in London,
July 7th, 1717, at half-an-hour past two in the
morning," and reached East Grinstead, distant
forty-six miles, at half-past three in the afternoon.
The rate, including stoppages, was a trifle over
four miles an hour. But even in 1766 four miles
an hour was regarded as the height of postal
celerity. "Letters are conveyed in so short a

16 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

time, by night as well as by day, that every
twenty-four hours the post goes 120 miles, and
in five or six days an answer to a letter may
be had from a place 300 miles from London."
Letters were despatched from London, as well
as received, at all hours of the day and night,
there being no regularity in the service until
1784.

As a sample of speed in 1734 we may mention
that in that year John Dale advertised that a
coach would take the road from Edinburgh for
London "towards the end of each week, to be
performed in nine days, or three days sooner
than any coach on the road." Twenty years
later the pace, so far from having improved, was
worse, inasmuch as it took ten days in summer
and twelve in winter, and in 1763, the coach set
out, it is stated, once a month, and "took a
fortnight, if the weather was favourable." The
cause of this degeneracy is doubtless to be found
in the practice of post-chaise travelling in parties
by means of which a few travellers shared a
vehicle together and secured greater speed and
cheapness. A journey to York was regularly
done in four days ("if God permit").

In 1742 the Oxford stage-coach left London at
seven in the morning and reached Uxbridge at
mid-day. It arrived at High Wycombe at five
in the evening, resting there for the night, for
there was no travelling in the dark hours, and
proceeding on at the same rate on the following
day.

In 1758, however, there came an improvement.
Up to that year the Great North Mail set out

EXPEDITING THE MAILS. 17

thrice a week, occupying eighty-seven hours in its
northward journey and not less than 131 hours
on its return south. The cause of the latter
excess was the stoppages made at Berwick and
Newcastle, ranging from three hours at the former
to twenty-four at the latter. An Edinburgh
merchant, George Chalmers, a sufferer by these
delays, entered into correspondence with the
officials, and after pointing out that the stop-
pages were quite superfluous, induced them to
avoid the old, long route vid Thorne and York
for that by Boroughbridge, thereby shortening
the journey by twelve miles. This resulted in
the time-table being amended, so that the
journey was now achieved in eighty-two hours
to and eighty-five from Edinburgh. Further-
more, Chalmers prevailed upon the Government
to run the mails six times weekly. The Govern-
ment recognised Chalmers' services by making
him a grant of 600.

It was about the same time (1767) that Henry
Homer was congratulating his countrymen on
the vast improvements which he had witnessed
in his lifetime. To the condition of the roads
and the difficulties of internal communication he
attributed the backward state of the country in
the reign of Queen Anne.

The trade of the kingdom languished for means
of rapid transit. "Few People," : he says, "cared
to encounter the Difficulties which attended the
Conveyance of Goods from the Places where
they were manufactured to the Markets where
they were to be disposed of. ... The Natural
Produce of the Country was with Difficulty

CANAL PROJECTS. 19

circulated to supply the Necessities of those
Counties and Trading Towns which wanted, and
to dispose of the Superfluity of others which
abounded. . . . We are now released," he adds,
"from treading the cautious steps of our Fore-
fathers and our very Carriages travel with
almost winged expedition between every Town
of consequence in the Kingdom and the Metro-
polis. . . . Despatch, which is the very Life
and Soul of Business, becomes daily more
attainable! by the free Circulation opening in
every Channel what is adapted to it. ... There
never was a more astonishing Eevolution ac-
complished in the internal System of any
Country than has been within the Compass of a
few years in that of England. Journies of
Business are performed with more than double^
Expedition. Everything wears the face of)
Dispatch." In Homer's opinion, it was all duei
to the "Reformation which has been made in)
our Publick Roads."

Abroad the roads and means of locomotion
were, if anything, behind those of England, the
newly-introduced cabriolet being a luxury for the
rich, and in the more populous districts travel-
ling was usually done on foot or on horseback in
company, as described by Defoe towards the end
of his "Robinson Crusoe." The journey from
Lisbon to Calais by land took two months in
winter and five or six weeks in summer.

While these improvements in land carriages
were taking place, attention was also being paid
to the provision of facilities for carriage by
water. Canals were cut to connect various river

20 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

basins, and in 1758 the idea was revived and
finally carried out, of connecting the Forth and
the Clyde.

In 1758 Brindley had succeeded in carrying
out the Duke of Bridgewater's scheme, and this
gave a fresh impetus to canal projects. The
Duke was the possessor of immense beds of coal
at Worsley, which could not be profitably
worked owing to the cost of carriage to Man-
chester. The canal cut down this cost to a
fraction and was the beginning of a network of
canals which was soon spread over England. It
was the Duke of Bridegwater who, when asked
his opinion of the new tram-roads, declared that
they meant " mischief " to the canal-owners.

For those country gentlemen and citizens of
the old school who did not see any virtue in
rapid transit a further mortification was at hand.
This was the establishment of the mail-coach
system by Palmer in 1784. This celebrated
advocate of speed had had his attention drawn
to the singular discrepancy between the average
travelling rate of the post and of the coaches.
Letters which left Bath on Monday night were
not delivered in London until two or three
o'clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, and
sometimes even later ; yet the coach which left
Bath on Monday afternoon arrived in London
early enough for the delivery of parcels by ten
o'clock the next morning. Despatch was in
many cases of such importance to the Bath
tradesmen that, although the postage was only
threepence, they willingly paid two shillings to
forward their letters to the capital in the form of

22 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

a coach parcel. Elsewhere Palmer found the
same state of affairs. The post which left
London on Monday night or early Tuesday
morning, did not reach Warwick, Worcester or
Birmingham until Wednesday morning ; and the
Exeter post not until Thursday morning, while
letters were five days in passing from London to
Glasgow. It was now proposed to alter all this
and establish a regular mail-coach service all over
the kingdom, a project which met with the utmost
opposition from the authorities, who failed to
see " why the post should be the swiftest con-
veyance in England," and regarded the scheme
of bringing the Bristol mail to London in sixteen
or eighteen hours as "altogether visionary."
Nevertheless, Pitt was resolved to allow Palmer's
plan to be put into execution, and the first mail-
coach left London for Bristol on the evening of
the 24th August 1784. At the end of a dozen
years it was found that the greater part of the
mails were conveyed in one-half the previous
time, in many cases one-third, and in some of
the cross-posts in one-fourth of the previous time.
Although it became apparent after the intro-
duction of railways that the days of the mail-
coach system were numbered, yet coaches were
not entirely superseded on the leading highways
for many years. In 1832, according to the
London-Edinburgh time-table for that year, the
coach left the Post Office at 8 P.M., reached
Grantham at 7.23 the following morning, Don-
caster at 1.12 P.M., York at 4.54 P.M., Newcastle
at 1.50 A.M., and Edinburgh at 2.23 P.M. The
whole journey of 397J miles was thus made in

SPEED OF COACHES. 23

forty -two hours twenty-three minutes. The " up "
mail was somewhat slower, occupying forty-five
hours thirty-nine minutes, but both were equally
punctual in arrivals and departures en route, so
that it has been said that the farmers used to set
their clocks and watches by the mail-coaches.

Yet high speed was not yet gained. In 1751
it took twenty-four hours to go from London to
Dover : thirty years later it could be done in the
course of the same day, and in 1802 Lord Camp-
bell tells us that he started from the "White
Bear," Piccadilly, at 4 A.M., reaching Dover at
9 P.M., seventeen hours, including an hour's
stoppage for dinner at Canterbury.

Porter, in his " Progress of the Nation," states
that he " well remembers leaving the town of
Gosport (in 1798) at one o'clock of the morning
in the Telegraph, then considered a fast coach,
and arriving at the Golden Cross, Charing
Cross, at eight in the evening; thus occupying
nineteen hours in travelling eighty miles, being
at the rate of rather more than four miles an
hour."

In 1798 the Holyhead mail left London at
eight at night and arrived in Shrewsbury between
ten and eleven the following night, taking twenty-
seven hours to run 162 miles. About this time,
too, there was a coach on the road between
Shrewsbury and Chester known as the u Shrews-
bury and Chester Highflyer." It started from
the former town at eight in the morning and
arrived at Chester (a distance of forty miles) at
the same hour in the evening.

SPEED OF COACHES. 25

CHAPTER II.

SPEED in locomotion now began to be publicly
considered. The performances of the crack mail-
coaches were watched with that interest which to-
day occasionally attends the journeys of an "ocean
greyhound " or an express train to the North.

" It might have been supposed," writes Porter,
" that to attain so great a rate of speed as ten
miles an hour, the personal safety of passengers
would be further endangered, but the very
contrary is the fact, so that notwithstanding the
rapidity with which we are whirled along, the
number of accidents is actually lessened, a result pro-
duced by the better construction of the carriages
. . . and the superior character of the drivers." *

Sportsmen regarded these achievements as
affording them exciting entertainment, but the
mercantile part of the community were not slow
to perceive that the increased speed had a concern
for them. Both classes recognised that better
roads were necessary : Parliament became aroused,
and Telford and Macadam, by their improved
methods of road-making, paved the way, literally,
for more rapid locomotion. By the use of broken
granite, ashes and burnt clay, hundreds of miles in
the kingdom became transformed, and it was not

* " Seated on the old mail-coach," wrote De Quincey,
"we needed no evidence out of ourselves to indicate the
velocity. We heard our speed, we saw it, we felt it ...
. . . ; and this speed was not the product of blind in-
sensate agencies, that had no sympathy to give, but was
incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of the noblest among
brutes, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic muscles and
thunder-beating hoofs."

26 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

long before it was seen that one horse on a level
track could do as much work as four on a
common road.

The maximum speed obtainable by the mail-
coach on a good road had been reached. When
the era of railways dawned there were nearly
3000 stage-coaches in operation of which number
about half plied out of and into London and
about 100 mail-coaches. In his coach system the
Englishman took a natural pride, especially upon
comparing it with that of France. In no other
country was there such promptitude of arrival and
departure, or such a vo lume of tran spor tation traffic.

For instance, the Edinburgh mail ran 400
miles in forty hours, stoppages included, which
was at the rate of nearly eleven miles an hour.
A coach to Exeter, the Herald, went over its
ground, 173 miles, in twenty hours, although the
country was hilly ; and the Devonport mail per-
formed its journey, 227 miles, in twenty -two hours.
Of course this increase of speed was considered
alarming by those who had been accustomed to
the old-fashioned slow coaches, and the speed at
which the new vehicles travelled was regarded as
a menace to human life.

Nevertheless, there were a body of men crying
progress, men like Anderson and Gray, who
declared that the commercial future of the country
depended upon rapid transit, and that if railroads
with steam locomotives were employed it would
even be possible to attain a velocity of twenty
miles an hour. Upon this proposal the utmost
ridicule was cast, especially by the Quarterly
Review, which assured its readers that the people

CONSERVATIVE OPINION.

" would as soon suffer themselves to be fired off
upon one of Congreve's ricochet rockets as trust
themselves to the mercy of such a machine (a
high-pressure engine) and going at such a rate
(eighteen or twenty miles an hour)." Criticising
the project of the London and Woolwich Kail-
road, the Quarterly backed old Father Thames
against it for any sum, and expressed the hope

GLOBULAR-SHAPED MAIL COACH USED ON THE CONTINENT
A CKNTUIIT AGO.

that Parliament would " in all railroads it may
sanction, limit the speed to eight or nine miles
an hour, which is as great as can be ventured
upon with safety." Yet at eight or nine miles an
hour the cry was still "we move too slowly
unless we can transport our coal and iron our
goods and passengers more quickly, we are
giving hostages to fortune and will surely not
progress as we ought to progress."

Reflecting upon it now, it seems strange that

28 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

so obvious an idea as a tram or railway had not
occurred to mankind at an earlier period in its
history. It probably did, but mankind was not
ready for it : there was nothing to be served by
an increase of speed. Apparently, few cared to
move quickly ; with us in the twentieth century
velocity of motion is an end in itself, as witness
skating, tobogganing and the switchback railway
to say nothing of cycling and motoring, which
do lead us somewhere. It is true Dr Samuel
Johnson extolled the delights of post-chaise
travelling at the exciting velocity of ten miles an
hour ; but celerity of movement seems, even some-
times in warfare, to have been an unimportant
and therefore unconsidered factor. Napoleon
extended the principle of rapid transit to those
armies which astonished Europe about the same
time that England was bewildered by the news
that a journey between London and Edinburgh
could be done in less than two days.

The actual inventor of railways is unknown
most probably the idea was contributed to by
many. Eoger North mentions a sort of wooden
tram-line existing in the neighbourhood ol
Newcastle-on-Tyne prior to 1676. "The manner
of the carriage," says he, " is by laying rails of
timber from the colliery down to the river ex-
actly straight and parallel ; and bulky carts are
made with four rowlets fitting these rails,
whereby the carriage is so easy that one horse
will draw down four or five chaldrons of coal, and
is an immense benefit to the coal-merchants."

It was soon discovered that one grave disad-
vantage attended the use of wood for the con-

FIRST TRAMWAYS. 29

struction of the rails its liability to wear.
Wherefore, instead of wooden rails, flat iron
bars were employed, nailed to the sleepers in the
same fashion as the timber rails. This change in
construction was found to work well, there being
less friction to overcome on the iron than on the
wooden rails. In other cases, stone was employed
in the construction of these tramways, sometimes
to form the rails, but more often the sleepers.
A subsequent improvement was made (in 1789)
in the iron rails, by forming what is known as
an edge rail. The advantage of this was that
neither wheel nor rail became clogged with dirt,
a condition inseparable from flat rails.

Dr James Anderson late in the eighteenth
century recommended the construction of rail-
ways for the purpose of conveying agricultural
produce from one part of a farm to another. At
a later date he proposed the general extension of
railways or tram-roads throughout the kingdom.
The carriages were of course to be drawn by
horses. "Suppose," said he, writing in 1801,
long before the introduction of the steam loco-
motive, " a railway were brought from the wharfs
to Bishopsgate Street, ... all the waggons to be
made of one size and form, each capable of con-
taining one ton of sugar, or other goods of similar
gravity. Let the body of each of these waggons
be put upon a frame that rests upon the two
axles of the four wheels, calculated to move only
upon the railway, and let each of these waggons
be loaded with goods which are to go to the same
warehouse or its vicinity. The whole of the
waggons being thus loaded, they are moved forward

30 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

till they came to the end of the road, at which
place they should be made to pass under a crane."

The crane would lift the waggon upon another
truck, formed for street use, and when emptied
at the close of the day returned to the railway
truck which returns to its point of departure.
Anderson believed that this method of distribu-
tion, instead of the old and cumbersome carter
system, would result in a great saving of money,
time and labour. "The convenience of such
roads would be very great from the circumstance
of having separate moveable waggons as above
stated. One separate waggon or more could be
thus left at any place on the road, and others
taken up in their stead, like passengers in a
stage-coach, without disturbing the others. ...
On the same plan it is certainly very prac-
ticable to carry roads of a similar description
from London to Bath."

Soon afterwards tram-roads or railways began
to spread over the face of the country, more
especially in the northern counties, but as yet no
one contemplated the employment of tram-cars
as a substitute for stage-coaches, until about the
era that the locomotive engine was invented.
The plan just mentioned of a system of railways,
the motive power being horses, was never there-
fore cariied out, although so late as 1830, four
years after the opening of the Stockton and Dar-
lington Railway, it was proposed to use horse-
power on the London and Birmingham Railway,
the vehicles being warranted to travel at the rate
of eight miles an hour. In 1801 the Surrey
Railway obtained an Act for the construction of

INVENTION OF LOCOMOTIVES. 31

a tram-road for general merchandise from Wands-
worth to Croydon, and the line proved a success,
one horse being able to pull over fifty tons or
fifty times what could be done on an ordinary road.

Soon after this time James Gray of Notting-
ham, visiting one of these tramways which
connected the moutli of a colliery with the
shipping wharf, exclaimed to the engineer of the
line : " Why are not these tram-roads laid down
all over England, so as to supersede our common
roads, and steam-engines employed to convey
goods and passengers along them, so as to
supersede horse-power?" The man's answer
was, "Just propose that to the nation, sir, and
see what you will get by it ! Why, sir you will
be worried to death for your pains." Notwith-
standing from that moment Gray began to preach
the doctrine of tram-roads, locomotives, steam-
engines and the superseding of horse-power. " It
was his thought by day ; it was his dream by
night. He talked of it till his friends voted him
an intolerable bore. He wrote of it till the
reviewers deemed him mad."

Beyond all question the first steam locomotive
engine which actually carried passengers on
common roads was constructed by an ingenious \
French mechanic, Nicholas Joseph Cugnot,../a'*
native of Lorraine. He was born in 1729, and
in his youth served in Germany as a military
engineer, publishing several works on military
science. After Cugnot's retirement from the
army, he was enabled, at the public expense, to
build a steam-propelled carriage to run on com-
mon roads, which was tried in 1769, in the

32 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

presence of a number of illustrious personages.
It was mounted upon three wheels, the leading
wheel being driven by an engine whose two
pistons acted upon it alternately. During its
first run Cugnot's machine carried four passen-
gers, and travelled at the rate of two and a
quarter miles an hour. Another locomotive
from which great things were expected was built
in 1770, and made several successful trials in the
streets of Paris. Unluckily, the machine had
the misfortune to meet with an accident : it
capsized at a street corner and was appropriated
by the police, who locked it up together with its
inventor. Cugnot, however, was quickly released,
and long enjoyed a pension from the Government
as a reward for his labours.

In this country the first practical idea of
applying steam-power to wheeled carriages
occurred to Dr Eobison, by whom it was
communicated to Watt in 1759. Some time
subsequently, the latter made a model of a high-
pressure locomotive, and described its principle
in his fourth patent in 1784, which, among
certain improvements, specified " a portable
steam engine and machinery for moving wheel-
carriages." His friend, Murdoch, in 1787 made
an engine which was employed to drive a small
waggon round a room at his house at Kedruth,
in Cornwall. Amongst those who saw it was
Richard Trevethick, who, in 1802, took out a
patent for a similar invention. Symington also
exhibited a locomotive in Edinburgh in 1787,
and eight years later worked a steam-engine on
a line of turnpike-road in Lanarkshire and an

TEN MILES AN HOUR.

adjoining county. The locomotive of Trevethick
and Vivian in 1802 ran on the Merthyr tram-
way, and drew a load of ten tons at the rate of
five miles an hour. But one of Trevethick's
locomotives blew up an accident which did
much to create distrust of their use.

PASSENGER ENGINE BY STEPHENSON.

In the meantime George Stephenson was busy
at Killingworth verifying the experiments of(,
other inventors and perfecting his own. In
1816 he patented engines that would travel ten
miles an hour without a load.

General discontent with the means of inter-
communication through the country followed on
all this agitation, and rendered commerce rest-
less. When Gray published his "Observations
C

34 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

on a Eailroad for the Whole of Europe," in 1820,
he said, " Here is the main-spring of the civiliza-
tion of the world ; all distances shall disappear ;
people will come here from all parts of the
continent without danger and without fatigue;
distances will be reduced one-half; companies
will be formed ; immense capital paid and
invested; the system shall extend over all
countries; emperors, kings and governors, will
be its defenders ; and this discovery will be put
on a par with that of printing."

On the 27th September 1825, a short public
railway, sanctioned after repeated delays by Act
of Parliament, was opened between Stockton and
Darlington, in the county of Durham, a distance
of about eleven miles. By the advice of George
Stephenson, who had been appointed engineer of
the line, iron rails were substituted for wood,
and gradually gaining the confidence of the
directors, he prevailed upon them to employ
instead of horses, such a locomotive engine as he
had recently tried, and with success, at Killing-
worth Colliery. It was intended, of course,
solely to transport coal, not passengers. The
directors, chiefly Quakers, were ridiculed for
their decision. " I am sorry to find," said Lord
Eldon, "the intelligent people of the North
country gone mad on the subject of railways."
Another authority observed that he would
undertake to "eat all the coals that your rail-
road will carry." The farmers were told they
would be ruined, as there would be no demand
for horses. Nevertheless, the bill was carried,
the road wag built ; and at the appointed hour, in

STOCKTON AND DARLINGTON LINE. 35

the presence of a great multitude, "the train
moved off at the rate of from ten to twelve miles
an hour, with a weight of eighty tons, with one
engine ' No. 1 ' driven by George Stephen-
son himself ; after it six waggons loaded with
coals and flour ; then a covered coach, containing
directors and proprietors ; next twenty-one coal
waggons, fitted up for passengers, with which they

THE EXPERIMENT, FIRST RAILWAY PASSENGEK COACH, 1825.

were crammed ; and lastly, six more waggons
loaded with coals."

The results of the opening of the Stockton
and Darlington line were in some respects sur-
prising. Although the conveyance of passengers
had formed no part of the original scheme, yet,
on the first day, as we have seen, many hundreds
of persons made the excursion, and passengers
soon insisted upon being taken regularly. It
therefore became necessary to provide carriages
adapted to their requirements, and thus began the
story of the railway passenger traffic of the world.

36 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

The Liverpool and Manchester was the first
railway of any magnitude that opened its line
for the carriage of passengers. It was opened
to the public, 15th September 1830, in the
presence of the Duke of Wellington and other
celebrities, including Mr Huskisson, who lost
his life that day as the result of a melancholy
accident. Previous to the opening, the directors,
in doubt about what form of traction to employ,
offered publicly a premium of 500 for the best
locomotive that could, under certain stipulations,
be constructed. It was required of the com-
peting engines :

1. That they should consume their own smoke.

2. That if they weighed six tons each they
should be capable of drawing a train of twenty
tons weight at a speed on the level of ten miles '
an hour.

3. That each should have two safety-valves
one beyond the control of the engine-driver.

4. That the height of the engine, including
chimney, should not exceed fifteen feet : and
lastly, that the price of the engine of the
successful competitor should not exceed 550
(which was the sum for which Stephenson had
built the Stockton and Darlington engine).

The trial resulted in Stephenson's Rocket
being declared the winner, the other competitors
being the Novelty by Braithwaite and Ericson
and the Sans Pareil by T. Hackworth, both of
these, however, suffering unlucky breakdowns.
The Rocket twice performed the distance of thirty
miles : the first time in two hours and a quarter,
the second in two hours and seven minutes. Its

THE EOCKET.

THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

Greatest speed was at the rate of thirty miles an
our, and the average about fourteen.
From that moment a new era in rapid transit
began. No one in Europe had ever travelled
thirty miles an hour before except in a balloon.

THE ROYAL GEOEQE,

Stephenson was forthwith appointed to build
the engines of the railway, and from that period
until his death conducted the engineering de-
partment of what grew to be the London and
North- Western Railway.

TWELVE MILES AN HOUR. 39

On the 15th September 1830 at the grand
opening of the line the Northumbrian, one of the
most powerful of the engines, took the lead,
followed by the train of eight locomotives and
twenty-eight carriages, which as it rolled proudly
onwards, deeply impressed the spectators.* At
Parkhurst, seventeen miles from Manchester, a
halt was made to replenish the water tanks,
when the accident occurred by which Mr
Huskisson lost his life, a tragic blot on the day's
triumph. On the following day the line was
thrown open for business. The Northumbrian
drew a train with 130 passengers from Liverpool
to Manchester in one hour and fifty minutes ;
and before the close of the week six trains daily
were regularly running. The surprise and
excitement already created were further in-
creased when one of the locomotives by itself
covered the thirty-one miles in less than an hour.

Of the thirty stage-coaches which had plied
between the two towns, all save a single one
went off the road soon afterwards. The trans-
port of goods and merchandise commenced in
December and furnished new occasion for
amazement to the public, for a loaded train
weighing eighty tons was drawn by the Planet
engine at from twelve to sixteen miles an hour.
In the following February, 1831, the Samson
achieved a greater feat, conveying 164J tons

*A local newspaper, describing the event of the opening,
when Steplienson himself held the starting lever of the
Northumbrian, observed, " The engine started off with this
immense train of carriages, and such was its velocity that in
some parts the speed was frequently twelve miles an hour."

46 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

from Liverpool to Manchester in two hours and
a half, including stoppages, which would, have
required seventy horses to perform in twelve
hours.

The success of the line rendered obvious the
possibilities of the system to the whole world.
Branches were soon made to Warrington, to
Bolton, and later on a junction was effected to
Birmingham. Yet when in 1830 the London
and Birmingham Company had sought to obtain
their charter, a well-known engineer openly
deprecated " the ridiculous expectations or rather
professions of the enthusiastic speculator that we
shall see engines travelling at the rate of twelve,
sixteen, eighteen or twenty miles an hour.
Nothing could do more harm towards their
general adoption and improvement than the
promulgation of such nonsense." The notion
that one hundred miles an hour would one day
be achieved would probably have driven this
faint-hearted champion of rapid transit into
paroxysms of derision.

Early in 1838 a Scottish periodical announced
that, before the publication of its next number,
in consequence of the despatch of the mails to
Warrington by the railway, the inhabitants of
Edinburgh would receive their letters and papers
a whole day sooner, that is to say, in thirty-one
instead of fifty -five hours. A return by post
between London and Edinburgh, which in 1818
occupied a week, would now be done in three
days and a half. The prophecies of disaster on
account of the railway were unfulfilled : instead,
everything prospered on their account, even

42 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

the canal proprietors were amazed to find
that railway competition improved their profits,
instead of declining them. Even horseflesh
increased in value, and yet it had been declared
that if the railways were to be superseded the
stage-coach horses would soon become worthless.
George Stephenson prophesied that it would
be cheaper for a working-man to ride by rail
than to walk, and the prediction has been
literally fulfilled in urban districts. As early as
1844, Parliament enacted that passengers should
be carried over all lines with moderate speed
and comfort at fares not exceeding Id. a mile.
To these parliamentary trains, as they were
called, however, the lowest class of passengers
were at first rigidly restricted. The speed may
be gauged from the fact that the train from
Euston to Liverpool, 20 If miles, started at 7.40
A.M., stopped at every station, and arrived, if
punctual, at 6.35 P.M., thus occupying nearly
eleven hours on a journey which passengers,
paying the same low fare, can now perform in
a little over four hours.

CHAPTER III.

ONCE the art of navigation had been mastered
and the regular trade routes established, the
matter of speed was allowed to take care of
itself, and even in quite modern times the rate
at which ships travelled was an arbitrary one
and not of a progressive character. Marco Polo
in the twelfth century doubtless travelled as fast

EARLY STEAMBOATS. 43

as Drake and Raleigh ; and the early voyages
undertaken by the East India Company to India
do not seem to have been materially improved
upon by their service in the era of Warren
Hastings.*

Eapid transit was occasionally made, even in
the old days ; and as the eighteenth century
wore on and speed came to be more and more
considered in commercial circles, regular efforts
were made by rival interests to economise time
and lessen the number of days and hours en
route.

But it was not until steam was applied tc
navigation that speed became a certainty, and,
therefore, a necessity of marine traffic, and it
grew possible to establish a regular ocean time-
table. Yet to demonstrate that even with sail-
ing-ships our ancestors did not avail themselves
of the utmost advantage, there was the memor-
able annual ocean race of 15,000 miles run by
the China tea-ships within living memory. The
London tea-brokers, in order to get the new crop
into the market as quickly as possible, used to
offer a prize of 500 to the officers and crew of
the first tea-laden ship which reached the Thames.
In 1866 nine such sailing ships left Foochow
between May 29th and June 6th, not very long,
ranging from 686 to 853 tons register, but all
fast, five being Clyde built, three Aberdeen, and
one Liverpool. Every yard of canvas was spread,
and they were borne swiftly and steadily by the

* One voyage, Hastings' return from Calcutta to Ply-
mouth in 1785, was thought remarkable for speed, "it was
done in four months and a half.

44 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

trade- winds across the ocean, sometimes sighting
each other on the way. " It was a wonderful
race ; for the Teaking, Ariel, and Serica all entered
the Thames in one day (Sept. 6th), nay, all
between 9.45 and 11.30 in the evening, the other
six ships being farther from the winning-post." *
It is not necessary here to go into the vexed
question as to who invented the steamboat,
an honour claimed for several rival inventors
in several different countries nor into the
early history of that contrivance. We know
that as early as 1783, Fitch, an American,
propelled a steamboat on the Delaware river
by paddles; but the project was soon aban-
doned. Five years later Patrick Miller, of
Edinburgh, fashioned a steamboat which went at
the rate of five miles an hour ; and in the follow-
ing year, in conjunction with Symington, built
another steamboat, which attained a speed of
seven miles an hour, dragging a heavy load. In
1807, Robert Fulton, who had been personally
studying the various experiments in Europe,
built a steamer, with engines by Boulton &
Watt, which made the voyage up the Hudson
from New York to Albany, a distance of 150
miles, at the rate of five miles an hour, which
was regarded as an astounding feat. The first
to make a sea-voyage by steam was Stevens, who
went in a new steamer from New York to the
Delaware ; and having introduced many im-
portant improvements, achieved the unheard-of
velocity of thirteen miles an hour on that river.

* The course was about 10,000 miles ; at the same speed
Calcutta would have been reached in eleven weeks.

CROSSING THE ATLANTIC.

In Europe the pioneer of steamboats for pas-
senger traffic was Bell's Comet, which began to
ply regularly between Glasgow and Helensburgh
in 1812. In the following year steamers ap-
peared on the Clyde, the Severn and the Thames,
and in a few years steam navigation was firmly
established, not only in Great Britain but in
continental countries.

THE "COMET."

The innovation of steam soon entirely revolu-
tionised river and channel traffic. Whereas, before
1813, shipping had been entirely dependent on
the wind, it was now possible to travel at the
rate of nine miles an hour in a dead calm and
seven in moderately boisterous weather, as well
as to carry goods and passengers at one-third the
charge exacted by land transit. In 1821 they
first carried the mails between Dublin and Holy-
head and between Calais and Dover.

When it was first proposed to cross the Atlantic

46 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

from England solely by steam-power, the project
was regarded with suspicion, notwithstanding all
that had been thus early accomplished by steam.
A number of the most eminent scientific men
recorded their opposition to it, and its failure
was freely prophesied even by those who believed
in the future of land traction by steam. The
distance to be traversed was at least 3000 miles
of clear ocean, with no intervening land where a
vessel might put in for shelter and supplies. It is
true that in 1819 a vessel named the Savannah,
of 350 tons, had made the journey from New
York to Liverpool in twenty-six days ; but this
vessel had used sails as well as steam, and was,
besides, a week longer on the voyage than the
sailing "liners." The quantity of coal necessary
to propel a steamer with engine of 300 horse-
power across the Atlantic would, it was esti-
mated, be two tons for each horse-power of the
engine or, say, 700 tons altogether, including
provision for accident or delay. There could not
possibly be room for so much fuel : if the tonnage
of the vessel were made more than four times
its horse-power, the latter would be inadequate
to its propulsion at the ordinary rate of steam-
ships.

The first ship actually to steam across the
Atlantic was a Canadian the Eoyal William,
launched at Quebec, 1831, her engines being sent
from England. In 1833 she went from Pictou,
N.S., to Gravesend, arriving September llth, after
twenty-two days' passage. But this feat attracted
little attention, although it no doubt contributed
largely to the result so soon to be attained.

48 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

In 1836 there flourished a series of " liners "
which accomplished the voyage from New York
to London in about twenty days, but owing to
the Atlantic currents this time was usually in-
creased to thirty-six days on the voyage from
London to New York. Mercantile considera-
tions demanded an improvement in the speed of
communication between the Old World and the
New.

If the regular navigation of the Atlantic by
steam were practicable, it was essential to national
interests that it should forthwith be adopted.
Nothing is so important in extensive com-
mercial transactions as early and regular in-
telligence and a quick and speedy transmission
of orders and goods. From what steamers
had already done, it was urged reasonable to
expect that they would cross the Atlantic in
half the time occupied by the old liners.
New York would therefore be brought within
a ten or fourteen days* voyage from London,
Bristol, or Liverpool. Moreover the arrival
of advices could be circulated with certainty
to a day, if not to an hour and the effect
of this certainty and punctuality would have
a widespread influence in every department of
trade.

The Great Western, a steamship of 1200 tons,
which was to make the experiment, left Bristol
on the 8th of April 1838 for New York, having
on board 660 tons of coal and seven adventurous
passengers.

Three days before, the owners of the Sirius, a
much smaller vessel, built to ply between London

THE "GREAT WESTERN. 7

and Cork, had despatched her for the same des-
tination. Thus there ensued a struggle of two
steamers, which should be the first to traverse

THE " GREAT WESTERN.

the entire breadth of the wild Atlantic. The
Siriits, which had the start by some days and 400
miles, made little way comparatively the first
week. She carried more weight in proportion
than the Great Western; but as her coals were
consumed, she made much better running. For
D

50 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

instance, during the first week out, her daily run
never exceeded 136 miles; on the second day
indeed it was only 89. On the other hand the
Great Western accomplished ten miles an hour
during the second day, and her average daily
run for the whole voyage was 211 miles. At this
rate she would soon overtake her rival; but as
the Sirius got lighter she made greater speed.
On the fourteenth day she ran 218 miles, equalling
the Great Western, and on the twenty-second ran
only three miles less than her larger competitor.

But although it was a close race, the Sirius, by
reason of her start, was the winner, arriving in
New York on the morning of the 23rd. The
Great Western steamed in the same afternoon
amidst the greatest excitement flags flying,
guns firing, and bells ringing.

Ten to fifteen days had thus been knocked off
the westward Atlantic journey. Never before had
a voyage to the New World been done in fifteen
days. The first, by Columbus, had taken five
weeks.*

The Sirius proved too small for continued
Atlantic navigation, and was soon withdrawn
to follow her original route between Cork and
London, and was afterwards lost off the Irish
coast. Bub the Great Western continued to ply
regularly and successfully, making in the course
of the next six years thirty-five voyages. The
average distance steamed each voyage was nearly

* i.e. from the Canaries to St Kitts. The probable
distance run between Gomera and the newly-discovered
island was 3105 miles, an average of 105 miles in thirty-
five days. The longest daily run was 200 miles.

LIVERPOOL TO NEW YORK. 51

3500 miles ; the average time occupied in going
to New York was fifteen days, twelve hours, and
in returning, thirteen days, nine hours.

In 1845 the Great Britain reduced the time of
the voyage nearly one day to New York, but in
the meantime the record time for crossing the
Atlantic had been achieved by a Canadian, in
a ship the same size as the Great Western. In
1838, closely following upon the success of the
latter ship and the Sirius> the Government adver-
tised for tenders for carrying the ocean mails.
Eventually it was arranged that Samuel Cunard
of Halifax, Nova Scotia, should receive 65,000
per annum for seven years for conveying the
mails twice each month between Liverpool,
Halifax, Quebec and Boston. In pursuance of
this contract, the steamer Britannia left Liverpool
4th July 1840, and arrived at Halifax in twelve
days ten hours, the voyage home being performed
in ten days.

This was the foundation of the famous Cunard
Line. The speed and regularity with which the
mails were carried evoked general admiration.
The vessels were looked for arid usually arrived
on the appointed day, and a journey which was
made with daring and just apprehensions a few
decades back was soon reduced to a brief episode
lasting from nine to eleven days.

In 1849 the average length of passage from
Liverpool to Halifax was 1 1 days, 3 hours ; from
Halifax to Liverpool, 9 days, 21 hours; Halifax
to Boston, 34 hours ; Halifax to New York, 55
hours ; New York to Halifax, 62 hours ; and
Boston to Halifax, 41 hours. These returns

52 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

show a marked increase in speed over the early
voyages of steamers across the Atlantic.

But still although the transit across the ocean
had been rendered more rapid, the time of the
voyage between Liverpool and New York had
not been materially reduced.

The steamers of the Cunard Line were, however,
soon to have competitors. Soon after they began
to ply direct to the American commercial capital
a fleet of five American steamers, one after
another, appeared to contest with them the
" blue ribbon of the Atlantic." The first ship
of the Collins Line, called the Atlantic, sailed
from New York on the 27th April 1850. As
the time of her expected arrival at Liverpool
drew near, the public interest became intense,
and it was realised that a rivalry had begun
which would make of the ocean a gigantic race-
course for the ships of the two nations. But
"the prizes of the turf are paltry compared
with that for whicli these steamers contended
the proud distinction of establishing the most
speedy and safe communication between two
great continents and two mighty nations ! "

At length when the steamers of the Cunard
Line began to ply direct to the American com-
mercial capital the rate of speed began to
increase. With the splendid new ships which
were built every appliance which could ensure
speed was tried. In 1862, by the Scotia, then the
fastest and largest of the Atlantic fleet, the run
from New York to Liverpool was made within
nine days.

This feat was regarded as the acme of speed

THE SCREW PRINCIPLE ADOPTED. 53

in ocean travelling. " Faster than this," wrote
one great authority, " it would be neither safe
or desirable to go if, indeed, such velocity ever
became possible."

The superiority, however, was not distinctly
shown by either side. The fastest western
passage in 1850 was made by the Pacific in Sep-
tember, when only ten days, five hours were
consumed between Liverpool and New York ;
while the swiftest eastern voyage was that of
the Asia in ten and a half days.

In the meantime, the screw principle had been
developed, the Propeller, which entered the
Mersey in 1840, being the first large steamer to
dispense entirely with side paddles, and not long
afterwards all the vessels of the Inman Line were
equipped with screws. After the failure of the
Collins Line, this company obtained the mail
contract between Liverpool and New York.

On 16th August 1825, the steamer Enterprise
left Falmouth for Calcutta. She arrived at the
Cape on 13th October, and at Calcutta 9th
December, having been nearly four months on
the voyage, which was about the usual time of
a sailing vessel. This was found unsatisfactory :
but although shorter routes to India could be
found, there was none which was to be entirely
traversed by a single vessel. The expedient was
therefore resolved upon to break the voyage in
half and have it performed by two sets of
steamers. At the eastern extremity of the
Mediterranean a steamship would be within a
few miles of a sea which formed an unbroken
water route to the Far East. The obstacle was

54 THE STOEY OF LOCOMOTION.

the Isthmus of Suez. Several experiments were
undertaken by the Government, and in 1837 the
route via Alexandria, Cairo and Suez, comprising
a land transit of eighty-four miles, was adopted.
The British Government undertook the trans-
portation between England and Egypt, and the
East India Company between Egypt and India.
The mails were sent from Falmouth to Gibraltar
in vessels engaged in the postal service with
Portugal and Spain ; at Gibraltar they were
transferred to Admiralty steamers which con-
veyed them to Malta and Alexandria ; they were
then carried up the Nile to Cairo, and from
thence across the desert to Suez, where a steamer
belonging to the East India Company was in
waiting to convey them to Bombay.

The time occupied by the old all-sea route was
one hundred days; communication with India
via Suez was now reduced to between fifty and
sixty days.

Even yet the community was not satisfied. In
order to reduce this time still further, a treaty
was made in 1839 with the French Government
to convey a portion of the mails through France
to Marseilles, from whence they were forwarded
to Malta, where the steamer from Gibraltar was
met. By this expedient two more days were
saved.

Prior to 1837, the mails between Falmouth
and Gibraltar took from eighteen to twenty-one
days in transit, the vessels calling at Vigo,
Oporto, Lisbon and Cadiz. In that year the
Government entered into a contract with the
"Peninsula Steam Company," and soon their

THE INDIAN MAIL SERVICE. 55

steamers were conveying the mails in five days.
Desiring still further to accelerate the mail ser-
vice to India, a further arrangement was made in
1840 with this company to run from England to
Alexandria, calling only at Gibraltar and Malta,
and by this means communication to Suez was
made almost as rapid as through France.

When, in the course of two or three years, the
transit to Suez was rendered swift and regular, it
was natural that communication on the other side
of the isthmus should be extended and accelerated.
A contract was therefore made with the Com-
pany known thereafter as the " Peninsular and
Oriental" by which Calcutta, Madras, Ceylon
and China were embraced within the scope of
the service. The latter was commenced in 1845
with three steamers, the Bentinck, Hindustan and
Precursor, of about 2000 tons and 500 horse-
power. Ocean steaming was so far developed in
1850 that mails were delivered at Hong-Kong
containing letters which only fifty-five days before
had been written at New York. This perform-
ance, which so astounded our sires, and was even
a matter of wonderment in tfce early 'seventies, is
rendered more significant when we remeifcber
that these letters after crossing the Atlantic had
passed through Liverpool, London, Paris, Mar-
seilles, Malta, Alexandria and Cairo to Suez,
where they were placed on board the P. and O.
steamer, which bore them down the Red Sea and
across the Indian Ocean to Ceylon, where they
were transferred to another steamer and by her
conveyed, after calling at Penang and Singapore,
to their ultimate destination. The whole journey

56 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

was equal in length to half the circumference of
the globe.*

In 1851 the steamers for Alexandria sailed
from Southampton on the 20th of each month,
arrived at Gibraltar on the 26th, at Malta on the
1st of the following month, and at Alexandria on
the 9th. A small steamer conveyed passengers
and mails up the Nile and in vans across the
desert (the railway not being built at that time).
On the 10th the steamer left Suez, steaming
down the Red Sea to Aden. Calcutta was
reached in about twenty-eight days from Suez
or seven weeks from Southampton.

But although this velocity caused the utmost
admiration throughout Europe, the next few
years were to bring about great further changes
and improvement. Many important circum-
stances were to influence and expand the Eastern
traffic, principal among which was the assump-
tion by the Imperial Government of the powers
of the East India Company; the growth of a
gigantic trade with the free ports of China and
Japan ; the great increase of import and export
trade consequent on the Australian gold dis-
coveries ; the reduction of letter-postage and the
establishment of book-post; healthy steamship
competition and the construction of a railway
across the isthmus from Alexandria to Suez.

In 1866 the P. and 0. Company were bound
by contract to convey the mails between South-
ampton and Alexandria in 310 hours; Marseilles

* Even now the journey to Hong-Kong consumes forty
days by the all- sea route. To Bombay it takes but fifteen
days.

THE SUEZ CANAL. 5?

and Alexandria, 155 hours; Suez to Calcutta,
499 hours; Bombay to Hong-Kong, 413 hours;
Hong-Kong to Shanghai, 84 hours ; and Suez
and Bombay, 312 hours. A few hours' grace
was allowed in each case, but anything beyond
twenty-four hours involved a forfeit of 50 a
day ; whereas, to anticipate the delivery of the
mails entitled them to a premium of 25
a day.

Thus we see that the voyage by sea from
Southampton to Alexandria had been reduced
from nineteen days in 1850 to less than thirteen
days in 1866 ; while from Suez to Calcutta could
now be done in just under three weeks. By
travelling by rail, however, to Marseilles (thirty-
two hours), Alexandria could be reached in six
days, eleven hours from Marseilles.

Then in 1871 came the Mont Cenis Tunnel,
which placed unbroken communication by rail at
the disposal of France and Italy. This resulted
in the despatch of mails over-land to Brindisi,
and thence conveyed by steamers to Alexandria.

The great advantage of the Suez Canal is the
enormous decrease in the distance to be travelled
between Europe and India, and consequent
enormous saving of time. It is about 10,719
miles from London or Hamburg, by the Cape of
Good Hope, to Bombay. By the Suez Canal this
was reduced to 6274. From Marseilles to
Bombay via the Cape, the distance is 10,560
miles; by Suez it is only 4620.

And the passage through the Suez Canal itself
has been materially cut down. The average tran-
sit in 1886 was fifty-four hours. Now, by the aid

58 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

of electric light, navigation is continued through-
out the night, and the average passage of steamers
is just under seventeen hours. The width of the
canal in the straight parts is 213 feet. No ship
is allowed to exceed five or six knots an hour ; so
that if the canal were wider the hundred miles
could be done in less than half the time.

The value of the British possessions in the
West Indies and the importance of the South
American trade foreshadowed the establishment
of speedy communication in that quarter. Prior
to 1840 the best sailing vessels took four weeks
to Barbados and Demerara, although the distance
was only about 4000 miles in a direct line. By
the establishment of the Koyal Mail Steam-
Packet Company in the above-mentioned year, a
fleet of fourteen steamers were built to sail twice
every month to the West Indies, St Thomas
being the chief rendezvous. The run from South-
ampton to St Thomas was done regularly in
eighteen days. Ten years later this was cut
down to fifteen days.

In 1865 the Royal Mail steamer left South-
ampton on 9th of each month, got to Lisbon on
14th, St Vincent (Cape Yerde) on the 22nd,
crossed the Atlantic, reached Pernambuco on the
30th ; thence to Bahia on the 2nd of the following
month, to Rio de Janeiro on the 5th twenty-six
days after leaving England. At Rio a branch
steamer was ready to convey the mails farther
south, arriving at Monte Video on the 14th, to
Buenos Ayres on the 15th. This journey to Rio
has since been cut down to seventeen days, and
Monte Video can be reached in twenty-one days.

OCEAN SPEED TRIUMPHS. 59

The quickest journeys to South America are
made by the Hamburg- Amerika Line, which, after
leaving Lisbon, sails direct to Rio without calling
at any intermediate ports. Rio is reached four-
teen days after leaving Southampton, and Buenos
Aires in eighteen days.

The subsequent general adoption of the surface-
condenser and the circular multi-tubular boiler
enabled higher pressures of steam to be safely
carried and economically employed. By 1877,
we may say, steamers had been established on all
the longer routes and worked at high rates of
speed. In that year the Orient Steam Naviga-
tion Company began a series of fortnightly
sailings to Australia, one of their steamers, the
Orient, astonishing the world by making the
passage from Plymouth to Adelaide, via Suez
Canal, in thirty -five days, sixteen hours, and the
same voyage via the Cape, in thirty-four days, one
hour steaming time. It was when the Australian
liner Aberdeen was built in 1881 that the merits
of the triple-expansion type of engine, now so
universal, were first conclusively shown. The
engines of this vessel worked with a boiler
pressure of 125 Ibs. per square inch, and expan-
sion took place in three cylinders. Her first
voyage from Plymouth to Melbourne occupied
forty-two days. In 1883 a New Zealand line was
instituted, and voyages from England thence cut
down from sixty-five to thirty-seven or forty
days.

But it was and is on the Atlantic that the
greatest ocean speed triumphs have been won.
In 1874 the White Star liners Britannic and

60 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

Germanic were built at Belfast, and from that
year re-began a hotly-waged contest for superiority
in speed, size and equipment which has lasted to
the present day. Each increase in speed now-a-
days represents innumerable modifications some
minor, some radical which engineering and
shipbuilding science suggests. For a time the
White Star liners maintained first place for
speed, until they were ousted by the Inman
liner City of Berlin, which beat the Britannic '$
record of eight and a quarter days across the
Atlantic. Liner after liner appeared, each faster
than its predecessor, until in 188G the average
time between Sandy Hook and Queenstown was
about six days, fifteen hours, as compared with
eleven days, nineteen hours in 1856. Since then
the record has been lowered repeatedly. The
Campania achieved the journey in five days,
twelve hours, fifteen minutes, which was sup-
posed to be unsurpassable until it was broken
first by one ocean greyhound and then another,
the Lucania in 1894 doing the voyage in five
days, eight hours from Queenstown to New York.

The Lucania's record of 562 knots in a single
day was soon to be beaten by the great North
German Lloyd steamers sailing from Southampton
to New York, one of which, the Furst Bismarck,
had already done this longer journey in less than
six and a half days.

In July 1901, the Deutschland lowered all
records by crossing the Atlantic in five days,
eleven hours, five minutes, her average speed
being 2 3 -51 knots, whilst the best day's run
was 557 miles. The distance traversed between

62 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

Sandy Hook and the Eddystone on that occasion
was 3082 miles. In June 1902 the Kronprinz
Wilhelm maintained a trifle higher average speed
than the Deutschland's record. As a matter of
fact, the length of the voyage between New
York and Plymouth was not reduced, as the
Kronprinz was five days, eleven hours, thirty-two
minutes running between Sandy Hook and the
Eddystone, twenty-seven minutes longer than
the Deutschland, but in those few minutes she
steamed an additional thirteen miles, the log ot
the Kronprinz showing that the total distance
travelled was 3095 miles. Thus, although the
Kronprinz established a new record for average
speed, the Deutschland's 557 miles remained the
best day's run on the homeward voyage. The
Kronprinz's average speed throughout her trip
was 23*53 knots.

In 1901 the new twin-screw steamer Arundel,
made a record Channel passage from New Haven to
Dieppe in two hours, fifty-eight minutes, or at an
average speed of twenty-two knots. The absence
of all vibration was secured to passengers by a
patent balancing arrangement of the machinery.

What part electric traction will play in the
future of steam navigation cannot easily be
predicted. But even with steam, it is almost
certain that the old piston and cylinder type of
engine will be superseded. Another and funda-
mentally different type the turbine in which
the impulse of the steam spins a wheel instead
of pushing a piston is making great headway.
The antiquity of the idea is considerable it is
even ascribed to Hero of Alexandria, who

FIFTY MILES AN HOUR. 63

describes an elementary form of such an engine,
and this rotary principle was certainly experi-
mented with and abandoned by the seventeenth
century experimenters. The reason was that it
was not adapted to pumping, this being the
end then, and until towards the close of the
eighteenth century, in view. In the meantime
the piston-engine became developed, and the
turbine principle rested dormant until only some
twenty years ago the requirements of the dynamo-
electric machine opened up fresh inducements
for development. By 1894 so many details had
been worked out, that capital was induced to
venture upon the construction of an experimental
ship. This vessel, the Turlinia, after repeated
trials and modifications achieved the unprece-
dented speed of 34 J knots an hour. This was
the high-water mark of marine travelling but
it was to be surpassed. The Viper, a larger but
similar vessel, constructed for the Navy, as a
torpedo-destroyer, reached a velocity of forty-one
miles an hour. The builder has stated his con-
fidence that fifty and even sixty miles an hour
will yet be achieved by such craft on the high
seas.

Turbine engines were soon adopted on many
cross Channel steamers, and were found to give
greater speed for the same horse-power, with
much less vibration than before. At the same
time, coal consumption, engine room staff, and
weight of machinery were reduced. It is there-
fore not surprising that turbines are now being
used to drive ships of all sizes.

The first ocean liner to be fitted with turbines

FIFTY MILES AN HOUR. 65

was the Allan liner Victorian in 1904. In 1907
came the Cunard vessels the Lusitania and
Mauretania, which quickly lowered all previous
Atlantic records. The Mauretania in 1909 ac-
complished the journey from Queenstown to
Sandy Hook in the remarkably short time of four
days, ten hours, forty-one minutes a record which
has not at present been surpassed. Her average
speed on this journey was 26'06 knots an hour,
and her longest day's run was 676 knots.

The mammoth liner, of the Hamburg- Amerika
Line, the Imperalor, now nearing completion, is
fitted with four turbine engines having a total
of 72,000 horse-power, and capable of developing
an average speed of 22J knots an hour. One
of the immense rotors, containing 50,000 blades,
weighs 135 tons, and develops over 22,000 horse-
power. The casing enclosing the rotors is 25
feet long and 18 feet in diameter. The shafts
are 1J feet, and the four propellers 16 feet, in
diameter.

The Imperator, which is the first of three
sister ships, is the largest steamer ever built.
She has a displacement of 50,000 tons, and her
length is 919 feet. In length she will be beaten
by the Aquitania, the latest steamer of the
Cunard Line, which will be almost 1000 feet
long. Her displacement will be 45,000 tons,
the same as that of the ill-fated Titanic.

For the present, at least, the commercial
contest has been abandoned, and no further
attempts at record breaking are being made.
It is possible also that the commercial limit
of size has been almost reached. The huge
E

68 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

vessels now being constructed are designed
not with a view to higher speeds, but to provide
greater carrying capacity and greater comfort
for passengers. Ball-rooms, theatres, verandahs,
and winter gardens, restaurants, cafes and tea
gardens, render these modern floating palaces
as comfortable as the most luxurious hotel ever
erected on land.

It may well be that the year 1911 will prove
to have marked the beginning of a new era in
ocean travel, for in that year the first commercial
oil-driven vessel crossed the Atlantic. For
many years engineers have been working at
the problem of the application of the internal
combustion engine to ocean-going vessels on a
large scale, and the results of their labours
are now becoming apparent. The first motor
vessel to cross the Atlantic was the Toiler, a
twin-screw vessel built at Wallsend. She is
fitted with Diesel engines (constructed at Stock-
holm) of 1000 horse-power, and consumes crude
oil. It is claimed that the oil consumption is
under two tons per day, whereas steam engines
of the same power would require from eight to
nine tons of coal. Several similar vessels are
under construction.

In 1912 some much larger oil-driven craft were
produced. The Jutlandia, a vessel of some 5000
tons displacement, built on the Clyde, is 370 feet
in length, and is fitted with engines of 2500
horse-power. The machinery in these motor
vessels occupies only about one-third of the
space of boilers and steam engines, thus leaving
far more room for the stowage of cargo and

OIL AS FUEL. 69

for the use of passengers. When, in addition
to this, the saving in fuel cost is remembered,
the future before this type of vessel is readily
realised.

A novel form of sea-going cargo vessel was
also launched in 1911, the Holzapfel I. She
is fitted with gas engines and gas-producing
plant. The fuel consumed is said to be half
the amount that would have been required had
she been fitted with steam engines.

Compared with the leviathans of the ocean
to which the traveller of to-day is accustomed,
these oil-fuel vessels may seem indeed trifling.
Nevertheless, their importance cannot be over-
estimated, indicating as they do the rapid
advent of the age of petrol. There is little
doubt that these slow-going cargo steamers,
making their ten or eleven knots an hour, are
but the forerunners of the motor liner, which
will equal, if not surpass, the finest performances
of the present day.

CHAPTER IV.

IT was to be expected that foreign countries
would eagerly avail themselves of the ex-
traordinary advantages which railways had
been shown to confer upon commerce and
society.

But the neighbouring kingdom of France was

70 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

very backward. English visitors to that country
in 1845 were wont to complain of the slow pace
of the diligence, not remembering that it was
quite equal to that which at the beginning of
the century was ordinarily accomplished in
England.

Posting in Germany was soon, after the down-
fall of Napoleon, placed on a much improved
footing in the matter of speed : but even in 1840
from fourteen to eighteen German miles was
reckoned as the ordinary extent of a day's
journey.

"France," observes a writer in 1844, "has
allowed herself to be outstripped by her neigh-
bours, not only by England, but also by Belgium,
Prussia and Austria, in these means of extend-
ing national resources and civilization, which the
country more especially stands in need of. She
has, however, for the present laid out her money
in fortifications, and has little tp spare for lines
of communication. This, however, is not the sole
reason ; it lies in the want of confidence between
man and man, and in the absence of the spirit of
association, by means of which all great public
works are executed in England, by private enter-
prise, but which does not exist in France." Yet
even at this time the use of steam in navigation
was very general in France, all the great rivers
being traversed by steamers. " In almost all
cases," we read, "the engineers employed on
these vessels are Englishmen."

Railway progress in France was certainly slow,
and for some years lagged behind England,
Belgium and Germany. Although the intro-

PROGRESS ABROAD. 71

duction of the first tram-road dates from 1783,
it was not until 1835 that the first modern
railway was begun by the authorisation of the
line from Paris to St Germains, its completion
following two years later. In 1838 the Orleans
line was undertaken, and the railway from Paris
to Eouen was opened in May 1843 and soon
afterwards extended to Havre. Comprehensive
measures at last followed on the part of the
Government, which proposed to form railways
from the capital to all the frontiers of France,
taking the principal towns and cities en route.
By 1865 the plan was practically carried out,
and between 8000 and 9000 miles were open for
traffic.

In Belgium, preparations for railways began
in 1834, and thirty years later the network was
nearly as close and intricate as in Great Britain.
Germany early permitted railways to cross her
frontiers, and soon numerous lines were stretch-
ing far and wide throughout the Empire. Iron
highways also began to be projected and built in
Italy and Eussia, Holland, Sweden and the other
European states. In Spain in 1851 there were
only two railways, one of eighteen miles from
Barcelona to Mataro ; another forty-five miles,
from Madrid to Aranjuez. It took some time to
conquer the national aversion to rapid transit,
and journeys were still made throughout the
Peninsula at the speed with which the immortal
Gil Bias travelled from Madrid to Alcantara.

The first line in Spain was inaugurated with
the ceremony of "blessing the engine" by the
Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, in presence

LIMITATION OF SPEED. 73

of the Court, Cortes, distinguished nobles,
troops and halberdiers and three miles of
spectators. The following day the peasants on
the road, seeing the trains travelling at the
unheard-of velocity of fifteen miles an hour,
involuntarily fell on their knees and crossed
themselves until the monster was out of sight.
This speed was not, however, regularly main-
tained ; twelve miles an hour was for a long
time the standard schedule time on the Spanish
railways.

But let us return to England just before the
general employment of railways.

In 1837 it was necessary in order to proceed
to Dover by the most expeditious public con-
veyance to book seats in the " Foreign Mail "
which left the General Post Office in St Martin's
le Grand every Tuesday and Friday night, and
arrived in Dover in time for the packets at 8.15
the following morning thus beating by half
an hour any other coach on the road.

For day travel, the Express started from
the "Golden Cross," Charing Cross, at 10 A.M.
each morning, doing the journey in nine hours,
as did the "Union Coach." The others took
longer. The famous Tally-ho coach between
London and Canterbury, left town every after-
noon and accomplished the fifty-nine miles in
five hours and a half.

Laws were actually passed in England, on the
first introduction of steam on railways, limiting
the pressure in the engine-boilers to 30 Ibs. per
square inch. The first railroad charter contained
a clause limiting the speed of trains to twelve

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flu Him* fan fill V rlHrynl fnm .V..^ to \\'m l^./.'-m ../rtm. Jlfi4-*y M .V
(Und U)c>.i iU/t fr,.tn I'norri Street, rVii.k, ooe liour l-f..rc thr .l.p.iriurr <.r ml, 'I ru
' -

FACSIMILE TIME-TABLE, 1839.

FEARFUL VELOCITY DREADED. 75

miles an hour, and when thirty miles an hour
was suggested, it was ridiculed as an idea simply
insane. " Such a fearful velocity would, without
doubt, have the most disastrous effects upon
the circulation of the blood and the vital
organs."

We have seen what was the time consumed
between London and Paris : let us now glance at
the conditions which obtained in 1843 by the
chief routes :

By Dover and Calais.

Miles. Hours.

London to Dover (by railway) . 88 3|*
Dover to Calais (by steamer) . 25 3
Calais to Paris (by diligence) . 178 23

Total . 291 29J

By another route, via Brighton and Dieppe,
the journey to the French capital was made as
follows :

Miles. Hours.

London to Brighton . . . 50J 2
Brighton to Shoreham . 5 OJ

Shoreham to Havre . . . 94 9
Havre to Paris , 132 13

Total . 281J 24

When in 1839 the Midland Counties Railway
was opened the only modes of conveyance were
the canal, the fly-waggon and the coach. Only
three of the latter ran daily each way between

* In 1842 it is given in " Murray's Guide " as five hours.

76 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

Leicester and Nottingham. A wool-stapler stated
at the time that he frequently had from twenty to
five hundred bags of wool lying at Bristol which
could not be brought forward by land, and he
had therefore to divide the bulk and send it by
different routes ; the part despatched by the road
taking from a week to ten days in transit, and
that by water from three weeks to a month. So
great were the difficulties at Plymouth that goods
had usually to come by sea to London.

Yet in the early days of railways great speed
was attained on special occasions. Mr Allport
has recalled that in 1845, before the era of tele-
graphs, when " the battle of the gauges " (i.e.
between the broad gauge and the narrow gauge
system) " was being vigorously carried on, I
wished to show what the narrow gauge could do.
The election of George Hudson as member for
Sunderland had that day taken place, and I availed
myself of the event to see how quickly I could
get the information up to London, have it printed
in the Times newspaper, and brought back to
Sunderland. The election was over at four o'clock
in the afternoon, and by about five o'clock the
returns of the voting for every half hour during
the poll were collected from the different booths,
and copies were handed to me. I had ordered a
service of trains to be in readiness for the journey,
and I at once started from Sunderland to York ;
another train was in waiting at York to take me
to Normington, and others in their turn to Derby,
to Kugby, to Wolverton and to Euston. Thence
I drove to the Times office and handed my manu-
script to Mr Delane, who, according to an

THE RAILWAY MANIA. 77

arrangement I had previously made with him,
had it immediately set up in type, a leader
written, both inserted, and a lot of impressions
taken. Two hours were thus spent in London,
and then I set off on my return journey and
arrived in Sunderland
next morning at about ten
o'clock, before the an-
nouncement of the poll. I
there handed over copies
I had brought with me
of that day's Times news-
paper, containing the re-
turns of whathadhappened
in Sunderland the after-
noon before. Between five
o'clock in the evening and
ten that morning I had
travelled 600 miles, besides
spending two hours in
London, a clear run of
forty miles an hour."

It was at this period of
the railway mania that
one express steamed up to
London, 118 miles, in an
hour and a half, nearly
eighty miles an hour.

In 1846 the distance
between London and
Exeter (193f miles) was
regularly accomplished
in four hours and a half.
In the same year the

78 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

distance between London and Liverpool (210
miles) occupied just six hours.

In 1842 the Great Western Eailway caused
some interesting experiments to be made with
regard to speed. On one occasion an expert
driver ran his train over the eighteen miles
between London and Slough in fifteen minutes,
which was at that time the maximum speed
which had ever been attained on a railway. Six
years later the fifty-three miles between London
and Didcot were traversed in forty - seven
minutes.

For many years the reputation of being the
fastest train in the world was enjoyed by the
" Flying Dutchman." The distance between
London and Swindon, seventy-eight miles, was
regularly done in one hour and twenty seven
minutes, which was at the rate of fifty-three
miles an hour. In 1880, Exeter, 194 miles, was
reached in four and a quarter hours, or at an
average pace, including stoppages, of forty-five
and a half miles an hour.

Compare this schedule travelling by established
routes, with the seven hours from London to
Swindon in 1830, or the twenty hours from
London to Exeter, at the same epoch, of the fast
mail-coach.

Since the journey between London and Man-
chester had been cut down to four and a half
hours, twenty-five years elapsed before it was
found possible to diminish it. In 1885, however,
the three great lines had twelve expresses, each
accomplishing the distance in four and a quarter
hours, on some portions of the road over sixty

LONDON TO EDINBURGH. 79

miles an hour being made.* Between Crewe and
Rugby, seventy-five and a quarter miles were
covered in one hour and thirty-seven minutes.
From Manchester to Sheffield is forty-one miles,
and this journey is regularly done in fifty-nine
minutes, including a twenty mile gradient and a
three mile tunnel. It became possible at about
the same time for a resident at Grantham to
travel to London, 105 miles, in one hour and
fifty-five minutes, a journey which would have
taken his grandfather eleven hours to accomplish
by the best mail-coach on the road. It is now
done in one hour fifty minutes an average
speed of 57 J miles per .hour.

London and Birmingham are now brought
within two hours of each other. This is a saving
of a full half-hour over the time for 1901.

The journey from London to Edinburgh has
from time immemorial been regarded as the
criterion of rapid travelling in these islands.
We have seen that the high-water mark of the
Edinburgh mail in 1820 was forty hours,
stoppages included. To-day one may complete
the journey of 395 miles, via the Great Northern
Railway, in seven hours forty -five minutes. From
London to Leicester (100 miles) is now regularly
done in 105 minutes ; from Leeds to London (186
miles) in three hours twenty-five minutes, and
London to Brighton (51 miles) in sixty minutes.

To the Midland Railway is due the credit of
first running third class carriages by all trains.
Up to March 1872 progress for the ordinary

* The duration of the journey has now been curtailed
to three and a half hours.

EXPRESS TRAINS. 81

passenger was provokingly and scandalously slow.
Not only was the average speed scarcely more
than fifteen miles an hour, but the traveller was
forced to start at an uncomfortably early hour
to catch the only train that ran. The reform
was hailed with joy all over the kingdom.
" When," observed Mr Allport, " the rich man
travels, or if he lies abed all day, his capital
remains imdiminished and perhaps his income
flows in all the same. Bat when a poor man
travels he has not only to pay his fare, but to
sink his capital, for his time is his capital ; and
if he now consumes only five hours instead of
ten in making a journey, he has saved five hours
of time for useful labour useful to himself, to
his family and to society." The change, which
had taken twenty -five years to bring about,
resulted in enhancing the passenger traffic of
the kingdom four-fold.

If we wish to obtain an idea of the speed to
which railway trains were brought in less than
fifty years after their introduction, we have only
to compare it with the velocity of a cannon ball.
According to the investigations of Dr Hutton,
the flight of a cannon ball, with a range of 6700
feet, takes a quarter of a minute, or at the rate
of five miles a minute, or 300 miles an hour.
Hence it follows that a railway train moving at
seventy-five miles an hour has one-fourth of the
velocity of a cannon ball moving at 100 miles
an hour it has one-third that velocity. It may
therefore be considered as a huge projectile,
subject to the same laws which govern projectiles,
but weighing 100 tons instead of 100 pounds.

82 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

When a train is running at fifty miles an hour,
the pistons are working along the cylinders at
the rate of 800 feet a minute. When running
at seventy miles an hour, the pace of the train
is at the rate of 105 feet per second, so that if
two trains pass one another, each going at this
speed, they would flash past each other in a
single second, even if one were seventy yards long.

Nine-tenths of the fast or express trains in
England reach the standard of "thirty miles an
hour, including stops" (or a journey speed of
forty miles an hour), and the other tenth fall
short only because their journey is exceptionally
hilly, or exceptionally brief, or subject to delay.
The above regulation test, therefore, for any
train wishing to be called " express " in England
is not an artificial one, but a natural definition
supplied by the companies themselves on their
daily time-tables.*

Considerably more force has to be expended
to attain this speed than would appear at first
sight. " Imagine a train shot suddenly out from
its starting point at forty miles an hour, main-
taining with unflagging uniformity this same
high speed uphill, through suburbs and junctions,
persisting this pace without a moment's pause
for two or three hundred miles till it come to an
instantaneous stop at its distant terminus; the
mildest of the trains we call * express ' will arrive
as soon as this imaginary one, though our actual
train has had to labour slowly up the hills, to
slack for bridges, curves or junctions, besides
consuming precious time in four or five stoppages
* E. Foxwell, " Express Trains."

THE RACE TO THE NORTH. 83

of as many minutes each. The feeblest express '
is as smart as this ; what then shall we say of
trains which secure an ' inclusive speed ' of nearly
fifty miles an hour over summits of 1000 feet ] "

The Great Northern Railway has the shortest
route to Leeds, Bradford, York and Edinburgh,
being seven miles shorter to the latter city than
the North- Western, and fourteen shorter than the
Midland route. Its rolling stock is among the
best in the kingdom, and some of its achievements
between London and Liverpool and London and
Edinburgh exhibit a very high rate of speed. The
daily run from Grantham to London, which, as
has already been mentioned, is accomplished at
an average speed of 57 '5 miles per hour, is the
second best long distance run (counting only
journeys of 100 miles and over) in the country.

An interesting contrast, showing the progress
made during the last forty years, is provided by
the photograph reproduced as a frontispiece. The
enormous increase of size and power of the Great
Northern Railway Company's locomotives as built
in 1872 and 1912 (which is but typical of the in-
crease which has taken place on all our large rail-
ways) is well shown. These powerful present-day
engines are necessary to maintain high speeds
with the heavy trains now in use.

In the summer of 1888 the three great lines
which start from Euston, St Pancras and King's
Cross resolved upon an attempt to beat their
own record to Edinburgh. The best long run
made up to that time was that achieved by a
special train on the Great Northern Railway in
July 1880. It was conveying the Lord Mayor

84 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

of London to Scarborough. The distance from
London to York, 188 miles, was accomplished
in 217 minutes, which implied an average, in-
cluding a ten minutes' stoppage at Grantham, of
fifty-two miles an hour. The first fifty-three
miles from London were done in an hour, not
ten miles of the road being level. Stoke, 100
miles, was passed in one hour and fifty -one
minutes ; while between Barkstone and Tuxford,
twenty-two and a quarter miles, the speed was
at the rate of sixty-four miles an hour. At that
period, the ordinary express trains of the line
occupied three hours and forty-eight minutes
or eleven minutes more on the journey.

In August took place the first of the exciting
races to Edinburgh, when the daily performance
of each of the rival expresses was wired in detail
to the newspapers. The origin of the competi-
tion was the action of the Great Northern
Railway in announcing some months before that
it would carry third-class passengers in its night
express to Edinburgh and Glasgow, which took
nine hours to the former city and ten hours
twenty minutes to the latter. This was throwing
down the gauntlet to the North- Western, inasmuch
as it was in the one case nearly an hour quicker
than that Company's best third class express.

By the new arrangement, therefore, third-class
passengers could arrive in Edinburgh one hour
sooner by the Great Northern line. The doyen
of railways quickly responded by lowering
its time to nine hours between Glasgow and
Edinburgh and Euston. In addition, a new
express was put on for Perth, leaving Euston at

SCHEDULE TIME LOWERED.

10.30 and arriving in Perth at 9.35, twenty
minutes quicker than before. Admirers of speed
were delighted at these evidences of youthful
enterprise on the part of an old established line
up to then content to work its trains at a velocity
less brilliant than either of its two rivals.

INTERIOR OF A THIRD-CLASS DINING CAR, MIDLAND RAILWAY.

Early in June, the response of the Great
Northern came. It gave notice that it intended
forthwith to shorten its Edinburgh and Glasgow
journeys by half-an-hour both ways, making the
time for Edinburgh eight and a half hours, and
for Glasgow nine hours fifty minutes. The
interested public were also informed that the

86 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

Midland line intended to lop a whole hour off
their fastest time to Glasgow, and twenty-five
minutes off that to Edinburgh, thus doing the
former journey in nine hours twenty minutes
(twenty minutes longer than the North- Western,
whose route is twenty miles shorter) and Edin-
burgh in nine and three-quarter hours.

But the North- Western was not to be beaten :
it felt its prestige at stake and abruptly gave
three days' notice that from August 1st they too
would run to Edinburgh in eight and a half
hours. This sudden move at the eleventh hour
seemed to render it impossible for the other
road to arrange reprisals in time to secure the
bulk of the holiday traffic. Nevertheless, the
Great Northern in a few hours issued its work-
ing notices all over the line announcing that
from August 1st by their route the journey to
Scotland would be done in eight hours. The
third competing railway, recognising the futility
of further long distance rivalry, fell out of the
running and kept to their previous programme.
The last days of July were a stirring experience
for the " Office of the Superintendent of the
Line " at King's Cross and Euston. The urgent
introduction of such extraordinary "accelera-
tions" as these, involving special "shunts" and
signal-box instructions all along the line the
whole length of the route, demanded the utmost
coolness and executive skill especially as the
" accelerations " were wrought in the very
busiest week of the railway year. An alarmist
cry of "Danger" went up from certain news-
papers and excitable individuals, and all sorts of

PHENOMENAL SPEED. 87

horrors were wildly predicted, as a result of this
velocity.

During the first week the North- Western,
finding they ran over Shap summit easily in the
shortest time (at fifty-one and a half miles an
hour), and the Caledonian still more easily (fifty
miles an hour), gave notice that they would equal
the speed of the Great Northern. Yet every
day the rival expresses ran with the time, the
West Coast train, on the opening day, actually
saving fifteen minutes on the road, arriving at
Edinburgh at 5.52. The ninety miles from
Preston to Carlisle, a steep incline, was done in
eighty-nine minutes. As the rival line had also
been running under time, it decided that its
express should arrive in the Scotch capital at
5.45, or seven and three-quarter hours, from
London. The North-Western cheerfully fol-
lowed suit, and got into Edinburgh in seven
hours thirty-eight minutes. The Great Northern
then did the journey in seven hours thirty-two
minutes, and with that achievement the contest
suddenly came to an end. Negotiations took
place and a compromise was effected, the West
Coast relapsing to its previous programme of
eight hours, while the East Coast, being eight
miles' shorter, was permitted to make the transit
in seven and three-quarter hours. But although
"racing" ceased, phenomenal speed was main-
tained to the end of the month, and on the 28th
August the East Coast express reached Edin-
burgh at 5.29, three minutes sooner than the
best previous records. The North-Western
responded with a farewell performance, beating

88 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

this record by one minute in spite of the longer
distance. On one day of this race of 1888,
Crewe to Preston (fifty-one miles) was done in
fifty minutes ; Preston to Carlisle (ninety miles)
in eighty-nine minutes; Carlisle to Edinburgh
(lOOf miles) in 102J minutes; and Newcastle to
Edinburgh (124 miles) in 124 minutes. So
smooth was the motion that the unsuspecting
passengers were unaware they were taking part
in a feat that, on level ground, would have been
without a precedent.

The " race to the North " was resumed by the
rival railways in 1895. In June of that year
the best trains between London and Aberdeen
took eleven hours thirty-five minutes by the
East Coast route (523 miles), and eleven hours
fifty minutes by the West Coast (540 miles).
From July 1st the latter accelerated their time
by ten minutes, and their rivals taking this as a
challenge, immediately lowered their time by
twenty minutes. The West Coast responded a
fortnight later by an acceleration of forty
minutes, and a pitched battle ensued, raging
fiercely for a month. Although the West Coast
maintained the lead in arrival at Aberdeen
almost throughout, yet allowing for stoppages,
weight of train, &c., there was not much to
choose between the two competitors. On
August 22nd, the 8 P.M. train from Euston
reached Aberdeen at 4.32 A.M., an acceleration
of no less than three hours eighteen minutes on
its speed before the racing began. This meant
an average of 6 3 '3 miles an hour including
stoppages. The expense, if not the risk, of

LONDON TO ABERDEEN. 89

these high pressure speeds led to an agreement,
and the rivalry suddenly ceased. Nevertheless,
the September Bradshaw showed that ten and
a half hours would be the future time between
London and Aberdeen, a saving of more than
one hour on the old time, besides a considerable
improvement in the speed to Inverness, Perth,
Glasgow and Edinburgh. Moreover, the contest
restored to this country the record for daily
long distance fast travelling, which for three
previous years had been held by the Empire
State Express, which runs from New York to
Buffalo (440 miles) in eight hours forty minutes.
This now became beaten both by the West Coast
time to Perth (450 miles) in eight hours forty
minutes, and by the East Coast time to Dundee
(452 miles) in eight hours forty-seven minutes,

As a rejoinder, on September llth the New
York Central Railway ran a racing train from
New York to Buffalo, which performed the
journey in six hours fifty-one minutes, an average
speed (including stoppages) of 64*22 miles an
hour!

Another important acceleration of railway
speed brought about in 1895 was on the Great
Western Railway between London and Bristol,
Bath and the west of Ertgland generally. It was
accomplished by the purchase of the Swindon
Junction Hotel property, which was held by its
owners under an extraordinary agreement which
made it obligatory to stop all passenger trains
passing through Swindon, ten minutes for re-
freshments. This ridiculous arrangement dated
from 1841 and was for ninety-nine years. In

90 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

order to annul it the Great Western Company
had to pay no less than XI 00, 000.

Since the "race to Edinburgh" of 1888, there
had been an understanding that neither of the
rival companies should time their day trains
quicker than eight and a half hours. Twelve
years later, however, in November 1900, the
East Coast route announced that thereafter it
would accelerate its " Fly ing Scotsman" so as to
do the journey in eight and a quarter hours.
The West Coast Company did the same. It was
believed that the first-named company were ex-
tremely desirous of winning back to Great
Britain the record for railway speed which in
the interval had again passed first to America and
then to France. For the title of the fastest train
in the world, once belonging to the " Fly ing
Scotsman," was in 1900 bestowed upon the
" Sud Express " of the Orleans Company, which
averaged fifty-four miles an hour, including
stoppages, for a journey of 486 miles. But this
rate of speed is a remarkable exception for France.

The accepted definition of an English or
American express train is one whose speed, in-
clusive of stops, is at least forty miles an
hour. This figure, we are told, exhibits the
relative efficiency and energy of the traffic
administration, while the "running average," as
it is called, may show a much higher degree of
speed, excluding the stops.

Very few Continental express trains attain a
journey speed of forty miles an hour, the average
being considerably less. In 1888 the distance
between Paris and Brindisi, 1182 miles, took

SPEED IN AMERICA. 91

forty-three hours, which, fast as it would have
seemed to our grandfathers, was yet only an
average of twenty-six miles, or no faster than
such ships as the Umbria, Etruria and Deutschland
travelled on the Atlantic.

The St Gothard Tunnel was begun in 1872
and finished in 1880; it measures nine and a
quarter miles in length, is twenty-six feet wide
and twenty-one high, and cost -2,270,000 to
build. In connection with the railway, which
climbs up the lower slopes of the St Gothard and
descends on the other side, it is possible to cross
the Alps from Lucerne to Belli nzona, 105 miles,
in three and a half hours; fifty years ago it
required twenty-three hours.

In America, the country perhaps where time
and speed are most prized in the affairs of life,
rapid transit has within the last twenty years
grown to be universal, at least in the eastern
states, and in the cities. Urban and local transit
forms a feature of itself, but in the speed of the
ordinary railways it is only during the last twenty
years that the American lines have equalled those
of Great Britain.

In the old days it took a whole day, with
relays of horses, to travel from Baltimore to
Washington, a distance of only forty miles ;
when railways were introduced it was accom-
plished in two hours ; in President Lincoln's time
it was done in a little over an hour. It now
regularly takes forty-five minutes, and has been
done in less.

The ninety miles between New York and
Philadelphia is now covered in ninety minutes.

92 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

The journey to Chicago, 909 miles, recently
took less than eighteen hours, by one line ; and
although sixty miles longer by another route
was accomplished in the same time, at an average
speed for nearly 1000 miles of 54 '6 miles an hour.
Both lines now take 20 hours. Chicago to San
Francisco takes seventy-two and a half hours,
and to cross the entire continent from New
York four days eighteen hours.

A few years ago the journey of fifty-five and
a half miles from Philadelphia (Camden) to
Atlantic City was accomplished in fifty minutes
a speed of 66*6 miles an hour. At the present
time the fastest running in the United States
is made between New York and Albany (143
miles) at 53*6 miles per hour. The long journey
of 439J miles between New York City and
Buffalo is perfoimed at the rate of 53'2 miles an
hour.

The longest non-stop run in Great Britain is
made by the Great Western Railway between
London and Plymouth. The distance of 226
miles is traversed at an average of fifty-five miles
per hour. In 1903 a Royal special train per-
formed this journey at an average of sixty-three
miles an hour.

The quickest service now regularly running in
this country is on the North-Eastern Railway
from Darlington to York, a distance of 44 J miles,
the average speed being as high as 61*6 miles an
hour. Almost as good is the speed of 61*3 miles
an hour attained daily by the Great Central
Railway on the short distance of only 22 J miles
between Leicester and Nottingham. Considering

CONTINENTAL RECORDS. 93

the large proportion of the journey which must
be occupied getting up speed and slowing down,
this is an excellent performance. The next
highest speed is made by a much heavier train
than those just referred to, on the Great Western
Eailway between Paddington and Bath. The
distance is 107 miles, and the time occupied one
hour forty-eight minutes, which gives an average
of 59 -4 miles an hour. This is the quickest long
distance run in the world. Foreign long distance
times are also beaten by the Great Central
Railway, which runs from Marylebone to
Leicester at an average of 57*8 miles an hour
over the whole distance of 107J miles.

This long distance speed record, which
originally belonged to the United Kingdom
during the London to Edinburgh contests, was
for a time held by France with a run of 120
miles from Paris to Arras in 117 minutes an
average of 61*5 miles an hour. The fastest train
in France at the present time runs from Paris to
St Quentin. The distance is ninety -five miles, and
the time taken ninety-five minutes. Germany's
best speed is fifty-five miles an hour the rate at
which the distance of 101 miles between Berlin
and Halle is traversed by the expresses of the
Prussian State Railway.

In 1891, on the Canadian Pacific line, a special
train conveyed the Japanese mail from Vancouver
to Brockville, Ont. (2800 miles), in seventy-
seven hours, or a speed of thirty-six miles an
hour for the whole of this vast run. On the
Grand Trunk Railway of Canada the best service
is provided by the "International Limited,"

THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY 95

which is said to be " Canada's finest train." It
runs from Montreal to Chicago, a distance of 840
miles, in twenty-two hours, which gives an average
of 38*2 miles per hour. In Australia, from
Melbourne to Sydney is run at thirty-four miles
an hour, including stops, and over thirty-seven
excluding stops. The best run in Australia is from
Parramatta to Penrith, a distance of twenty miles,
which is covered in twenty-five minutes, equivalent
to a speed of forty-eight miles an hour.

When, some fifty years ago, Jules Verne wrote
his entertaining romance, " Around the World in
Eighty Days," he was thought to have exceeded
all bounds of possibility : at that time the
circumnavigation of the globe had never been
accomplished in less time than 121 days. In
1873 it was done in 109 days. Eventually, an
American performed the feat in ninety days, and
in 1891 a Miss Bisland lowered the time to
seventy-two days. The opening of the Trans-
Siberian Eailway has removed many of the
difficulties that formerly had to be overcome, and
has considerably reduced the time required.

Eastern Siberia, which a few years ago was one
of the most remote districts on the face of the
globe, is now almost as accessible as Canada.
The connection between Russia and Siberia forms
the greatest railway scheme in the world. The
first sod was cut at Vladivostock, May 24, 1891 :
and to facilitate the work of construction the
line was divided into three parts. Even in the
incomplete state of the line, by means of the
lakes and rivers, uninterrupted steam communi-
cation between the railway system of Europe and

96 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

Vladivostoek on the Pacific was rendered possible
in 1901. From Cheliabinsk, the first station in
Western Siberia, to Stretensk, via Omsk, Tomsk
and Irkutsk, is a distance of 2762 miles. This
section of the journey comprises the passage of
Lake Baikal, just beyond the Irkutsk. "When
the line was first opened special ice-breaker
ferries were built capable of transporting a
complete railway train across the lake, the train
continuing its journey from the eastern side of
the lake to Stretensk, which is still the terminus
of the Siberian Railway. From thence a steamer
travelled up the Amur river a distance of 1443
miles to Khabarovsk, which was already con-
nected to Vladivostoek by 485 miles of railway,
opened in 1898. The entire journey then took
seventeen days, and from Paris to Vladivostoek
was timed at twenty-four and a half days.

The railway round the south end of Lake
Baikal was completed in 1905, but the extension
from Stretensk to Khabarovsk, as originally in-
tended, was abandoned in consequence of the
prohibitive cost. Instead, a line has been made
branching off from Karimskaia (about 150 miles
before Stretensk) to Kharbine (the junction for
Dalni and Peking), and on to Vladivostoek.
This section of the Trans-Siberian Railway, which
is properly the Eastern Chinese Railway, is about
1300 miles in length. The whole distance from
Cheliabinsk to Vladivostoek is 4028 miles ; from
Moscow, 5393 miles ; and from St Petersburg,
5797 miles.

A weekly service of through trains is main-
tained by the International Sleeping Car Com-

COMFORTABLE TRAVELLING. 97

pany between Moscow and Vladivostock. These
trains are composed of first and second class
cars, containing compartments for two and four
passengers. The first class compartments contain
two sleeping berths ; also table, chair, special
reading lamp, and ample hook and rack accom-
modation for hand baggage. A separate lavatory
(with hot and cold water) is provided for every
two compartments communicating; there are also
lavatories at each end of the car. On the Kussian
State and Chinese Eastern Company's trains there
are no lavatories between the compartments.

The personnel of the trains generally speak
four languages Eussian, German, English and
French. On the Chinese portion of the journey
the attendants speak Chinese and Kussian. The
restaurant cars contain a library with illustrated
papers and games dominoes, chess, etc. Of the
conductors, one is a trained nurse, and arrange-
ments can be made for a doctor to visit the train
during its stoppage at the principal stations. A
medicine chest is carried on each train. Little
more could be done to provide for the comfort of
passengers on this long and tedious journey.

The traveller leaves London at 9 a.m. on
Monday, joins the Nord express at Brussels,
and by Wednesday evening finds himself at
Moscow. The same evening he leaves in the
through Trans-Siberian train. Ten days later, or
thirteen days after leaving London, he arrives in
Vladivostock or Peking. One day more suffices
to take him to Japan or Hong Kong. In 1804
the journey from London to Peking took twenty-
nine weeks.

98 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

Berlin and London are now, for the first
time, within nineteen hours of each other. The
traveller who leaves the German capital a few
minutes after one o'clock embarks at Flushing
the same evening, spends a comfortable night on
a well-equipped steamer, and lands at Folkestone
early the following morning. Before 8 A.M.
he finds himself in London, ready to com-
mence his day's work, having breakfasted on
the train.

The journey from Berlin to St Petersburg, 1028
miles, takes twenty-eight and a half hours, or
an average of thirty -six miles an hour. Compare
this with an express on the Lake Shore and
Michigan Southern Eailway which did the
journey between Buffalo and Cleveland, 183
miles, in 187 minutes, exclusive of stops. Allow-
ing for time consumed in slowing down, 172 miles
of the distance was run in 161 minutes, averaging
64*26 miles an hour. Short distances were covered
at the rate of seventy -five miles an hour.

The Orient Express leaves Paris for Constanti-
nople, and now takes only three days to do the
journey. By leaving London at 9 a.m., and
travelling by Chalons, one reaches Vienna at 5.50
the following evening, Budapest at 11 p.m., Bel-
grade at 6 a.m., Sofia at 4 p.m., and the conclusion
of the third day finds you at Constantinople.

The Indian mail train chartered by the British
Government traverses 1375 miles, and in forty-
eight and a quarter hours reaches Brindisi, where
the passengers take a steamer for Alexandria, and
from there reach Bombay in fourteen days from
London.

100 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

The distance between Paris and Marseilles
(536 miles) was in 1888 done in fourteen hours
nineteen minutes. The speed has since been
raised to fifty-seven miles an hour. The fastest
train in France is that between Paris and St
Quentin (ninety-five miles), doing the journey
in ninety-five minutes.

Germany and Belgium, while not as bad as
some other countries in this respect, such as Italy
and Spain, are yet far behind England and
America in the matter of rapid railway transit,
perhaps owing to the fact of state-owned lines
and the consequent lack of competition.

The first attempt to apply electric power for
the propulsion of railway locomotives was by
R Davidson on the Edinburgh and Glasgow
Railway in 1842 ; but a speed of only four
miles an hour was attained and the project was
abandoned. Electricity was employed in 1881
by Messrs Siemens & Halske on an electric
railway in Berlin; a line being subsequently
built one and a half miles long from Charlotten-
burg to the Spandauer Bock. They also applied
the system to a short railway at Amsterdam and
to another in Zankerode in Saxony. Great
attention was attracted in that year to an
electric line at the International Electrical
Exhibition in Paris, worked by Siemens. It
carried an average of 13,000 passengers per
week, few amongst whom did not perceive the
possibilities which electricity offered to the
future of rapid transit. Two years later an
electric railway, six miles long, was opened

ABORIGINAL TELEGRAPH*. 101

between Portrush and Bushmills in the north
of Ireland. The conductor employed was a
third rail, electricity being transmitted through
this conductor by means of steel brushes to the
Siemens motor by which the car was propelled.
The dynamo machines were driven by the power
of a natural water-fall of twenty-six feet, causing
two turbines to revolve at a speed of 225
revolutions per minute, each of which was
capable of yielding fifty horse-power. The cars
on this road ran at the rate of twelve miles an
hour. It was not long after this that a number
of electric tramways or railways were constructed
in various parts of Europe and North America.
The Liverpool over-head railway was opened
in 1893.

CHAPTER V.

WHEN Shakespeare made Robin Goodfellow
declare that he would girdle this terrestrial globe
in forty minutes, it was considered a ludicrous
stretch of the poet's imagination. No one could
have dared to suppose that the day would come
when such a statement would become a mere
truism indeed, a far too modest statement of a
fact which has grown commonplace.

The idea of annihilating time and space in
communication by distant signals is sufficiently
ancient to have occurred even to the most
uncivilised tribes. The North American abori-
gines were wont to convey intelligence thus from

102 THfi STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

hill to hill, and the Hottentots communicated
with each other by means of hill-top fires.

It is not requisite to mention the various
means of conveying information to a distance by
means of sound known to our ancestors, but it
might be profitable to glance at the origin
of Telegraphs, before electricity came to be
employed.

The first practical telegraph dates from 1684,
and was that of Dr Hooke, the mathematician,
an inventor of many ingenious instruments. His
method consisted in exposing successively as
many different shaped figures or signs as letters
are contained in the alphabet. If used in the
day-time, they might be squares, circles, triangles,
etc., and at night torches or other lights disposed
in a certain order. These characters or signs
were to be brought forward from behind a
screen attached to a moveable rod. Of this
" telegraph " the stations were to be at such
convenient distances as to enable the signals to
be seen with a moderately powerful telescope.
It is obvious that such a plan, although clever,
was also very complicated, owing to the number
of signals. But its inventor was so confident of
its practical utility that he declared that "the
same character might be seen at Paris within a
minute after it had been exposed in London."
It is certainly a pity that the system was not
tried, at least between London and York or
Edinburgh.

More than a century later, when Europe was
in the throes of 'war, many experiments were
made with the telegraph, the principal object

FRENCH TELEGRAPH SYSTEM. 103

being to simplify the mechanism, which in all
the earlier forms of telegraphic apparatus was of
a decidedly clumsy nature.

The first to render a telegraph available for
practical purposes was probably Amontons in
1690. It is related by Fontenelle that he in-
vented "a means to make known all that was
wished to a very great distance for example,
from Paris to Rome in a very short time,
three or four hours, and even without the news
becoming known in all the intervening space."
This proposition, so paradoxical and chimerical
in appearance, was executed over a small extent
of country. The secret consisted in placing 'in
several consecutive stations persons who, by means
of telescopes, having perceived certain signals at
the preceding station, transmitted them to the
next and so on in succession ; and these different
signals were so many letters of our alphabet, of
which the key was known only at Paris and Rome.

Other attempts were made in the course of the
ensuing century to induce the French Government
to take up various schemes of telegraphy. At
last, when the century was plunged into the
horrors of war, one Claude Chappe laid plans
before the Legislature in 1792, assuring them
that " the speed of the correspondence would be
such that the legislative body would be able to
send their orders to the frontiers and receive an
answer back during the continuance of a sitting."

After much vexatious delay the authorities
approved of the scheme, and Chappe with the
title of Ingenieur Telegraphe, was directed to
construct a telegraph from Paris to Lille. The

104 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

line, with its apparatus (a combination of a pole,
a beam, moveable arms and ropes), which allowed
of the transmission of 192 different signals, was
completed in two years. The first message sent
announced a victory. On the last day of Novem-
ber 1794, Carnot entered the Assembly with the
news, " Conde is given up to the Republic ! The
surrender took place this morning at six." The
Chamber voted that " the army of the North had
deserved well of the country " ; this message was
sent instantly to headquarters, and before the day's
session broke up, the members were informed that
their orders had been transmitted 150 miles to
Lille and acknowledged by the commander there.

Such a successful result of course led to the
immediate formation of other lines which radiated
from the French capital to all parts of the
kingdom. The signals (depending on varying
positions of the beam and arms) were conveyed
with great rapidity; and to avoid confusion,
the moveable arms on the right of the central
post were reserved exclusively for Government
messages, those on the left being employed in the
service of the line. By this means, accidents or
delays could be reported without detriment to
the official despatch ; and the Government was
enabled to employ a cipher code of its own.

From Paris to Calais, a distance of 152 miles,
there were thirty-three stations, and a message
could be sent from one extremity to the other
in three minutes ; to Strasburg, 255 miles and
forty-four stations, in six and a half minutes ; to
Toulon, 317 miles and 100 stations, in twenty
minutes. The longest lines were to Brest and

SIGNALLING BY SHUTTERS. 105

Bayonne, the former 325 miles, the latter 425 ;
and altogether there were 519 stations, the
annual cost of the service amounting to 40,000.
The brothers of the inventor Chappe succeeded
him in turn, the last being in office until 1830,
when the Revolution of that year deprived him
of his post.

A system of such value could not but be
instantly appreciated by neighbouring countries,
whose enterprising inventors proposed to each
Government various forms of apparatus. Among
those who submitted their plans was the father
of the celebrated Maria Edge worth, who contrived
a telegraph of four wedge-shaped boards, mounted
on the tops of poles and so pivoted as to assume
various positions. Edge worth believed his system
was easily capable of serving for the transmission
of messages all the way between England and India.

Another inventor, named Gamble, devised an
apparatus of shutters to fill the openings in a
window frame, different signals being conveyed
by the alternate opening and shutting of the
spaces. Lord George Murray in 1795 substituted
a different arrangement of shutters ; they being
six in number, painted black, the different letters
and figures being indicated by the situation of
the open shutter. The Admiralty adopted this
plan for a telegraph between London and Dover.
In 1806, Davis's sliding shutter increased the
value and celerity of Murray's arrangement, but
ten years later the whole principle of shutters
was abandoned by the authorities for a modifica-
tion of the older moveable arm system. In
1816 the telegraph or semaphore, long familiar

106 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

to the public, on the roof of the Admiralty,
was erected. It was invented by Sir Home
Popham and consisted simply of an upright
pole with two moveable arms. It was not
capable of a large number of signals ; but it
proved simple and effective and the angular
position was easily seen at a distance. The
time between London and Dover was reduced
for long messages, and Popham's telegraph con-
tinued in use until it, and all its kind, was
superseded by the wonder-working magnetic
flash. It was, of course, quite useless at night,
or in fogs and dull weather ; and for three
quarters of the year the telegraph from the
capital to Portsmouth stood idle. As an illustra-
tion of one of its drawbacks, on one occasion,
when tidings of moment were expected from
Spain, the Admiralty officials received a message
"Wellington defeated." The utmost disap-
pointment and depression prevailed, until the
arrival of the royal messenger with the despatches,
when it was found that the fog had delayed the
rest of the message, which should have been
"Wellington defeated the French at Salamanca."

But the era of electro-telegraphy was now at
hand, and a means was about to be adopted
which placed all the laws of time and distance at
defiance. As far back as 1736 Stephen Gray
had found that by means of pack threads, more
than 100 ft. in length, the electric current could
be transmitted to a considerable distance.

In France, two other experimenters, Dufay
and Nollet, sent a current along a wet cord 1300
feet. Dr Watson carried a wire across the

AN ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. 107

Thames at Westminster Bridge, one end being
in contact with a charged Leyden jar, the other
held by a person on the opposite shore. Another
individual was placed in communication with the
jar, and on a given signal both dipped an iron
rod into the river, whereupon the shock travelled
from one bank to the other by means of the wire,
and completed the circuit by returning through
the water. That this discovery was of a most
important character it is not necessary to
emphasise, seeing that it involved the principle
governing all subsequent experiments in elec-
trical transmission of this kind.

Hardly had the nature of this new and most
astounding agency become known than it was
followed in various quarters by proposals to em-
ploy it in the conveyance of signals. It is
related that as early as 1773 Odier wrote to a
lady of his acquaintance : "I shall amuse you,
perhaps, in telling you that I have in my
head certain experiments by which to enter into
conversation with the Emperor of Mogul or of
China, the English, the French, or any other
people of Europe, in a way that, without incon-
veniencing yourself, you may intercommunicate
all that you wish at a distance of four or five
thousand leagues in less than half an hour ! Will
that suffice you for glory 1 "

This vivacious spirit was not alone. In 1774,
Lesage, a Frenchman at Geneva, published a plan
for an electric telegraph. He proposed to arrange
twenty-four metal wires in some insulating sub-
stance, each connected with an electrometer,
from which a pith ball was suspended. On

108 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

exciting the wires by means of an electrifying
machine, the movements of the twenty-four balls
represented the letters of the alphabet.

Under date of September 16, 1787, Arthur
Young, in his " Travels in France," remarks :
" In the evening to Monsieur Lamond, a very
ingenious and inventive mechanic. In electricity
he has made a remarkable discovery. You write
two or three words on paper ; he takes it with
him into a room and turns a machine enclosed in
a cylindrical case, at the top of which is an
electrometer, a small, fine pith ball ; a wire
connects with a similar cylinder and electrometer
in a distant apartment ; and his wife, by remark-
ing the corresponding motions of the ball writes
down the words they indicate. ... As the
length of the wire makes no difference in the
effect, a correspondence might be carried on at
any distance ; within or without a besieged town,
for instance ; or for a purpose much more worthy,
and a thousand times more harmless between
two lovers prohibited or prevented from any
better connections." Here, then, was a complete
electric telegraph on a limited scale, and yet
years were to elapse before it was put publicly
into practical effect.

We have seen that Chappe's invention of
signals was adopted instead, and probably de-
layed the discovery or employment of voltaic
electricity. In 1796, Salva, a Spanish physician,
constructed an electric telegraph, which was made
useful ; and soon afterwards a more extensive
attempt was made by Betancourt, who stretched
wires from Aranjuez to Madrid, forty-five miles

MORSE'S TRIUMPH. 109

distant, conveying signals by the discharge of
Leyden jars. But nothing really came of these
attempts, for although the transmission of signals
over a considerable distance by electro-static
methods such as these may be theoretically pos-
sible, it cannot be carried out in practice. To
mention only one difficulty, whatever precautions
might be taken, leakage would be so enormous as
to render an actual installation of more than a few
yards unworkable. It was not until the invention
of the electric battery, and the discovery of the
properties of electric currents and electro-magnets,
that an electric telegraph became a possibility.

In 1816 Eonalds sent signals by frictional
electricity through eight miles of wire at Ham-
mersmith. This same inventor proposed the adop-
tion of an electric telegraph to the Admiralty,
and in a volume published on the subject in 1823,
remarked that if he "should be proved competent,
why should riot our kings hold councils at Brighton
with their Ministers in London? Why should
not our Government govern at Portsmouth
almost as promptly as at Downing Street 1 ...
Let there be electric-conversation offices, com-
municating with each other all over the kingdom!"

During the next fifteen years many experi-
menters were at work on the problem of the
electric telegraph.

It is claimed for Professor Morse, an American,
that he invented the first electro-magnetic tele-
graph while on a passage from Havre to New
York in 1832. But no account of this perform-
ance was published until 1837, when Schilling,
Gauss and Weber, Steinheil and Wheatstone

110 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

had achieved considerable success in the con-
struction of electric telegraphs. The first message
by the Wheatstone-Cooke system was sent be-
tween the Euston and Camden Town stations of
the London and North- Western Kailway on the
evening of July 25th, 1837.

Morse's contrivance included a marker at one
end of a wire, which, as contact was made or
broken, conveyed an arbitrary alphabet of dots
and strokes, representing definite characters.
Wheatstone (whose first patent was taken out in
1837) soon made improvements which greatly
simplified his first methods ; the number of wires
was reduced to two, and thirty letters could be
indicated in a minute. A new field for observa-
tion was opened up for the world by Wheatstone.
He showed that inasmuch as electricity travelled
at a speed which would girdle the globe seven or
eight times in a second, it could be employed in
measuring the rate of motion of projectiles, or
regulate the movement of all the clocks in the
country. With the proper mechanical acces-
sories a "lady seated in her drawing-room in
London might play Beethoven's sonatas on the
piano of her friend at Edinburgh ; or a ringer in
St Paul's belfry might entertain the frequenters
of the Parliament Square with a lively carillon
from the Tower of old St Giles's."

The first example of the electric telegraph for
commercial purposes was in connection with
the Blackwall Kailway, opened in 1840. The
announcements of departures, of stoppages, of
the number of carriages attached, of accidents
or causes of delay were regularly transmitted by

ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH,

GT. WESTERN RAILWAY.

TheFublio are respectfully iaformed that this ]
interesting & most jctfaordinai*y Apparatiis, i
by which upwards of SO SIGNALS can be i
transmitted to a Distance of 280,000 MI&ES
in ONE MINUTE,

[ : Hay b sn in operaden, dally, (Sundays except4> irom 9 till 8, t tic I

;00tmM 9 Sfe01^W

SJSrjTOy IJT/

Despatches Instantaneously swot to nad fro with tb* asost cosSUTj^g
secm-y. Post Horses Aod CoBYy6ace o evtty description jy be '
ordered by the ECKCTRIC TKtflBJkPK to be in readiness oa tte aymal j
of*- Train, t thr Paddmgtoa or Slough Station.

The. Tenoos for ser<Jing a Dspatcb r .orderbg Bost Horsey

N.B, Ms'Sfeiigers ia mtsjt'&ttBd*ace, so that com0Jt}icatiot
ceived by TeUr{>b, 1*0*14 b for^-aitjed, if Mquir^d, fe> aey jwurt ef

L KUIU

EARLIEST ADVERTISEMENT OF THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.

Queen Victoria made use of the wires mentioned in these handbills for
her first telegraphic communication with her Ministers in London.

112 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

electro-magnetic apparatus, placed at each of the
five intermediate stations.

Two years later, the system had been adopted
on the London and North -Western, South-
western and other lines. It had not been long
completed on the Great Western when a striking
instance occurred of the service which the new
invention was to render to society. A man of
respectable exterior took his seat in a first-class
carriage at Slough, eighteen miles from Padding-
ton he was a murderer fleeing from the yet
warm body of his victim. The hurrying engine
neared the terminus : the desperate man felt
certain of his escape ; but he had not reckoned
on the speed of the telegraph. An alarm had
been given at the scene of his crime ; quick as a
flash the wires bore it to London, describing the
man's flight and personal appearance. In three
minutes an answer announced the arrival of the
train, the identification of the fugitive, and the
certainty of his capture.

This, and other incidents of a similar kind,
naturally created a deep impression on the public
mind. On the birth of the new year (1845)
a telegram transmitted from Paddington was
received at Slough before the old year had
expired, there being a sufficient difference of
longitude to be marked by the velocity of the
mysterious new agent.

We are now so accustomed to the rapid public
record of passing events by the newspapers as
hardly to understand the patience of the reading
world prior to the era of the telegraph.

The first newspaper report received by wire

FIRST NEWS TELEGRAMS. 113

appears to have been of a public meeting at
Portsmouth, during the railway mania of 1845,
which created such interest in London that the
Morning Chronicle printed it an hour or so after
the meeting broke up. The other newspapers,
receiving their reports by train, which took three
hours, followed the example the next day.
After this, the proprietors of a Southampton
journal resolved to print the Queen's Speech
without waiting for the railway. The report
was transmitted, letter by letter, and the 3600
letters were set up in type in Southampton two
hours after delivery in Parliament. The only
limit now was the expense : and news telegrams
accordingly began to appear regularly in the
press.

The old signalling system or semaphore still
lingered on at the Admiralty until 1848, in
which year the new electric telegraph was
substituted.

Two years before the Electric Telegraph Com-
pany had been incorporated, with a central
establishment in Lothbury. The premises were
amply equipped with all the necessaries of tele-
graph service; and by means of wires, laid in
tubes underground, was connected with all
metropolitan railway stations, the Post Office,
the head police station in Scotland Yard, the
Admiralty, the New Houses of Parliament,
Buckingham Palace, and many other public
buildings. In addition, communication was
made with various places in the Provinces
including the chief towns and seaports. " Elec-
tric telegraphs," declared the Parliamentary

114 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

statute, "shall be open for the sending and
receiving of messages by all persons alike,
without favour or preference, subject to a prior
right of use thereof tor the service of Her
Majesty and for the purposes of the Company."
A proviso is also made in favour of the Home
Secretary of State, who may, on extraordinary
occasions, take possession of all the telegraph
stations and hold them for a week, with power
to continue the occupation, should the common-
weal demand it. There were established in
Edinburgh, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow,
Hull, Newcastle and other towns, subscription
news rooms, for the accommodation of the
mercantile and professional interests, to which
was transmitted by electric telegraph the latest
intelligence, including domestic and foreign
news ; shipping news ; the stock, share, corn
and other markets ; parliamentary intelligence ;
Lmid&Q, Gazette ; state of the wind and weather
from numerous places in England; and the
earliest possible news of all important occur-
rences. Other companies soon followed, to the
number of seven or eight ; a period of competi-
tion set in, and in 1861 the United Kingdom
Company established shilling telegrams, without
reference to distance. For some years this
charge double what it is at present was found
unremunerative, and at length an agitation
sprang up for the acquisition of the whole
telegraph system by Government.

The rise of electric telegraphs in France was
at first remarkably sluggish. The reason for this
was that the Government had spent a great deal

TELEGRAPHING TO EGYPT. 115

of time and money in developing their system of
semaphore telegraphs ; and even when they were
induced to avail themselves of electricity, it was
stipulated that the signals should still be pro-
duced by small instruments, similar in principle
and construction to Chappe's apparatus. At
length, however, this absurd stipulation was
withdrawn, instruments and equipments similar
to those in use in England were acquired by the
French Government, and by 1847 telegraphs
from Paris to Orleans, to Eouen, Lille and Calais
were brought into operation.

A curious economical advantage resulting from
the new system in France was the saving of
locomotive power on the railways ; for in accord-
ance with the practice on the French lines,
whenever a train was twenty minutes late, an
auxiliary engine was despatched to its relief
from one station after another along the route.
By 1850, 1500 miles of telegraphs were complete
and in progress in France.

It was not long before every country in Europe
began gradually to feel the benefit of this won-
derful medium of communication. Already in
1850, the ramifications of telegraphs extended
from Calais to Moscow, from the Baltic to the
Mediterranean. "Already," said one writer,
" there is talk of introducing the thought-flasher
into that land of wonders Egypt ; to stretch a
wire from Cairo to Suez for the service of the
over-land mail. Who shall say that before the
present generation passes away, Downing Street
may not be placed in telegraphic rapport with
Calcutta ? "

116 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

After this suggestion appeared, progress was
so rapid that in 1861 Europe boasted 100,000
miles of telegraphic wire; and in 1865, Downing
Street actually was "placed in telegraphic rapport
with Calcutta."

In America, it need hardly be said, the
telegraph was from the first most extensively
developed and applied. The lines were in many
cases carried across country, regardless of travelled
highways, over tracts of sand and swamp,
and through the wild primeval wilderness.
"Away it stretches the metallic indicator of in-
tellectual supremacy, traversing regions haunted
by the rattlesnake and the alligator solitudes
that re-echo with nocturnal bowlings of the wolf
and bear." Rapid communication was thus made
possible from North to South, East and West,
through all the length and breadth of the Republic
with a frequency and cheapness long exceeding
any other nation. This superiority has, since
the establishment of sixpenny telegrams, been
transferred to the United Kingdom.

And now we come to telegraphing without
wires. It was conjectured by Faraday, Helm-
holt^ and others that light from the sun and
electricity were of the same order, only differing
in degree, i.e. in the lengths of their respective
waves. Their velocity through space was the
same, namely 186,400 miles a second. Light
waves, heat waves and electric waves in travelling
from the sun to the earth a distance so great
that an express train travelling sixty miles an
hour would take 175 years to accomplish it
reach our earth in eight minutes. These waves

WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY. 117

cannot travel along nothing : they must have an
elastic medium which will transmit them. If the
ether be capable of conveying electrical energy
from the sun without loss and without interven-
ing wires, it was reasonable to ask : Why cannot
some form of instrument be devised which will
also send out along the terrestrial ether electrical
currents, even in a small way 1 Air must not
be confounded with ether. One set of vibrations
may concern, perhaps, thousands of waves per
second, but those in the ether are reckoned by
hundreds of millions, hundreds and even thou-
sands of billions per second. For example, if in
a thunderstorm, three miles distant, we see a
flash of lightning, the light waves in the ether
reach the eye at practically the same instant the
flash occurred; but the noise of the electrical
discharge travelling through air travels only 1150
feet a second, and so would not reach us for
fourteen seconds. In this time the electrical
current would have circumvolated the earth at
least 100 times. Yet although there is such a
wide difference in rapidity between the air and
ether waves, yet they bear much resemblance
to each other, as is seen in practical experiments
in syntony. Every musician knows that if a
violin and a piano be in the same room and are
tuned to each other, a note sounded on the violin
will find a response in the piano, if the dampers
be raised from the strings, by actuating the pedal.
In the same manner, in all recent experiments
with the Hertzian waves, a system of " tuning"
is resorted to, in order to establish perfect unison
between the receiving apparatus and the trans-

118 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

mitter. So important is this tuning or syntony
between waves that the privacy of messages sent
and received by wireless telegraphy may be
secured by it.

The first to suggest a method of signalling
across space without intervening wires was J. B.
Lindsay of Dundee about 1853. In the following
year he patented his invention and conducted
experiments in London and Portsmouth, where
he successfully telegraphed without wires across
500 yards of water. After a lapse of thirty-four
years, in 1887-88, other experiments were made
through the air by direction of Sir W. Preece,
who some years later successfully sent messages
across a distance of four and a half miles by the
use of dynamic electricity. Static electricity
was first used by Hertz, when it was found
that waves or vibrations passing through a wire
set up similar vibrations in the other. These
waves vibrate in all directions, and by very
delicate receiving instruments it was found
possible to gather them up in sufficient strength
to repeat their pulsations and record their
messages from the transmitter.

The next important step was the invention, by
Edward Branly of Paris, of a sensitive detector
which was improved by Sir Oliver Lodge, who
called it a coherer, and afterwards adopted in the
Marconi system. Mr Marconi in 1896 took out
his first patent, producing the first transmitter
capable of sending messages over long distances.
From that time onwards he has continued, by
many improvements, to build up the wonderful
system that bears his name, and which is now in
constant use all over the world.

WIRELESS TELEPHONY 119

Following closely on the success of wireless
telegraphy is that still more wonderful science of
wireless telephony, the possibility of which was
first demonstrated in 1906. The earliest systems,
which were patented in America as far back as
1901 and 1902, were those of De Forest and of
Fessenden. Other inventors have also come to
the fore, and great progress has been made. One
system, invented by Dr Poulsen of Copenhagen,
is said to have achieved a range of 175 miles
over land and 250 over water. Wireless tele-
phony has one great advantage over wireless
telegraphy, and that is, that when the system is
disturbed and signals are faint and confused, a
voice is much more easily detected than the
click of a telegraphic signal.

The reality of the new science may thus be
illustrated : The S.S. Umbria, like all the boats
of the Cunard Line, is fitted with the Marconi
system of wireless telegraphy. She set out from
New York, May 31st, 1902, and was soon in
mid-ocean. The American ambassador, speaking
at a concert on board, could only express a hope
that on landing the news of the conclusion of
war in South Africa might be imparted. He
reckoned without science. Late on that night a
Marconi message was received giving the news
of peace and the \\inner of the Derby ! It has
become a regular experience on the Atlantic
boats, at whatever distance from land, to see, as
in a London club, the servants carrying round
telegrams, and calling the name of the recipients.
The lonely sea has thus lost another of its
terrors.

120 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

Another striking example of the value of wire-
less telegraphy was provided by the terrible
Titanic disaster of 1912. Had it not been for
the wireless appeal for help received by the
Carpathia^ there is little doubt but that the
loss of 1490 lives would have been greater
by many hundreds.

CHAPTER VI.

" THE restless spirit of modern invention, not
content with guiding the mysterious power of
electricity, both above and beneath the surface of
the earth, proposes next to join the shores of
England and France by means of a submarine
telegraph. That such an undertaking is possible
there is but little doubt; but the question is,
would it be worth while to attempt to carry it
out 1 " The author of the foregoing in a work
on Telegraphs, published in 1848, decides in the
negative, for, says he, "the injuries to which the
wires would be subject, appear to create almost
an insuperable objection to this plan being carried
out on a large scale."

As yet we have seen that the speediest com-
munication between any points separated by the
sea was by means of the fast steamers, which had
now replaced the fast sailing ships of the begin-
ning of the century. Dover and Calais, as well
as London and New York, were solely dependent
on steam to convey at the most rapid rate tidings
upon which the fate of nations might hang.

In 1845 an American newspaper boldly pre-

. OCEAN TELEGRAPHY. 121

dieted that the Atlantic would one day be
spanned by an electric wire, to interchange
thought between the two great English-speaking
nations. The idea was derided as extravagant,
but many inventors had been experimenting in
submarine telegraphy, and in 1847 there came
the actual submarine line in Portsmouth Harbour.
The success of this led to projects for similar
wires or cables, and three years later, on the
28th August, after certain preliminaries, the
Goliah steamer started from Dover with a huge
reel on her deck, containing twenty-five miles of
wire, coated with gutta percha, which was slowly
and gradually unwound and submerged in the
water of the Channel. That same evening a
message flashed from under the sea to the horse-
box which served as a temporary office on the
English coast : " We are all safe at Cape Grisnez :
how are you ? " Thus international communica-
tion by electricity was achieved; and although
it was soon interrupted by the frailty of the
cable, which broke against the rocks, yet another
year saw it partake of a solid and permanent
character. At the outset the new method of
communication was only used for the trans-
mission of Stock Exchange intelligence ; but on
the 21st November 1851, the political news from
Paris published by the Times demonstrated in
striking fashion what a singular power had now
been developed.

Private messages (at a fixed rate of charge)
began to be sent, and early in 1852 London was
placed in direct telegraphic communication with
nearly all the chief cities of the Continent, via

122 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

this single cable. Prior to this year the announce-
ment of the death of a monarch or prime minister,
the overthrow of a State or army, might have
been transmitted under exceptionally favourable
circumstances from the English to the French
capital by means of the signalling telegraph in a
comparatively short space of time say, in a few
hours. But to the public generally, and for the
despatch of messages of merely private moment,
the only agent was steam and the post, and this
agent required in 1850, 21 hours to travel
between London and Paris, 52 hours between
London and Berlin, and six days between
London and St Petersburg. In 1853 a private
message from Windsor was delivered in Paris
in two and a half minutes.

In the previous year Ireland had been linked
to England by a marine cable between Holyhead
and Howth; submarine cable companies began
to spring up in all directions in that year, and
lines were soon laid in great number all over
Europe, even as far as the Black Sea and the Red
Sea. Many of these were at work when the
magnificent idea presented itself of a cable across
the vast stretch of the Atlantic Ocean. Already,
in 1851, a plan was formed for connecting New-
foundland and the Canadian Maritime Provinces
with America, and two years later the work was
begun. Financial difficulties, however, overtook
the project, and it was not until Mr Cyrus
Field lent his energy his counsels and his wealth
to the major task of spanning the ocean that this
part of the work was completed.

On the 7th August 1857, the two ships carry-

FIRST ATLANTIC CABLE. 123

ing the great Atlantic cable left the harbour of
Valentia, Ireland. There was no ship in the
world at that time (for the Great Eastern was
unfinished) capable of carrying the whole 2500
miles of cable, which was to stretch to Trinity
Bay, Newfoundland. The British Government,
therefore, lent the Agamemnon, and the Ameri-
can Government the Niagara, to divide the work.
The shore-end was landed and received with
ceremony by the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland on
the Valentia beach, he expatiating on the fervent
hope of establishing "a new material link be-
tween the Old World and the New." But the
enterprise was destined to temporary failure :
the cable broke and the ships returned. After a
disheartening delay, a new plan was decided
upon. The two ships steamed out together into
mid-ocean, where the two cables were spliced and
submerged, and then each ship began steaming,
one east and the other west. But they had not
proceeded far when the cable snapped again;
again it was spliced, and once more was it
broken, this time in two places. Thus there lay
at the bottom of the ocean 144 miles of cable
and the whole rendered worse than useless.
Nevertheless, the projectors were plucky men ;
they resolved to try again, and the third Atlantic
cable-laying expedition met with success a
temporary success, it is true and the first
lightning message sped across the Atlantic on
6th August 1858. Ten days later Queen Victoria
cabled the following message, which took but
sixty-seven minutes in transmission over 4000
miles from London to Washington :

124 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

" To the President of the United States. The
Queen desires to congratulate the President on
the successful completion of this great inter-
national work, in which the Queen has taken the
deepest interest.

"The Queen is convinced that the President
will join with her in fervently hoping that the
electric cable which now connects Great Britain
with the United States, will prove an additional
link between the nations whose friendship is
founded upon their common interest and reci-
procal esteem.

"The Queen has much pleasure in communi-
cating with the President, and renewing to him
her wishes for the prosperity of the United
States."

President Buchanan replied in a similar spirit,
declaring that the new enterprise was a " triumph
more glorious, because far more useful to man-
kind, than was ever won by conqueror on the
field of battle," and trusting that "even in the
midst of hostilities, the cable would be regarded
as neutral by all nations." The rejoicings over
the cable of 1858 were great; but, alas, they
were speedily cut short. The electric impulses
became weak, and gradually failed after having
conveyed a total of 400 messages between the
two hemispheres the last word transmitted
being curious to tell " Forward."

For five years following, no further capital was
forthcoming to make another attempt. But in
1865 a Company was organised; this time the
cable made heavier, and the whole length, 2300
miles, was shipped on board a single vessel, the

COMMUNICATION BY TELEPHONE. 125

Great Eastern. Still again, when the vessel was
1064 miles from Valentia, the cable broke, owing
to an accidental strain, and after a futile attempt
to recover it from the bottom of the sea, it was
abandoned for the season. In the following year,
another line was at last successfully laid by the
Great Eastern, the former cable recovered, and
thus the Old World and the New were per-
manently joined together in an intellectual bond.

Its success led to other cable systems. In
1869 a French Company laid a line from Brest
to St Pierre, an island off Newfoundland ; in
1873 a cable was laid from Lisbon to Pernambuco,
in South America. Two other Atlantic cables
were laid in 1874 and 1875 : and several others
since. The Pacific Ocean had to wait longer
for a cable : but one was finally established to
Honolulu, and in 1903 there are two others to
bridge the vast expanse between North America
and Asia and Australia, thus girdling the earth
with wire.

As a means of rapid communication rivalling
even the telegraph a place must be found in
these pages for the telephone, whose introduction
into Europe dates only from 1877.

The idea of transmitting sound to a distance
may be traced back to remote antiquity ; its first
practical expression was found in the speaking-
tube, and, in more modern times, in the string
telephone.

In 1667 Robert Hooke relates how by the aid
of a tightly drawn wire, bent in many angles, he
conveyed sound to a very considerable distance.

" 'Tis not impossible," he writes, " to hear a

126 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

whisper at a furlong's distance, it having already
been done ; and perhaps the nature of the thing
would not make it more impossible, that furlong
should be ten times multiplied. And though
some famous authors have affirmed it impossible
to hear through the thinnest plate of Muscovy
glass; yet I know a way, by which 'tis easy
enough to hear one speak through a wall a yard
thick. It has not yet been thoroughly examined
how far Otacousticons may be improved, nor
what other ways there may be of quickening our
hearing, or conveying sound through other bodies
than the air." He assures the reader that he has
" by the help of a distended wire propagated the
sound to a very considerable distance in an
instant."

Again, in the " Repository of Arts," September
1, 1821, there is a description of an instrument
invented by the electrician, Wheatstone, and
called a " telephone." " Who knows but by this
means the music of an opera performed at the
King's Theatre may ere long be simultaneously
enjoyed at Hanover Square Rooms, the City of
London Tavern, and even at the Horn's Tavern
at Kennington, the sounds travelling like gas
through snug conductors from the main laboratory
of harmony in the Haymarket to distant parts of
the metropolis ? . . . And if music be capable of
being thus conducted, perhaps words of speech
may be susceptible of the same means of
propagation."

Sixteen years later Page, an American, found
that a magnetic bar could emit sounds when
exposed to rapid alternate magnetizations and

BELL'S TELEPHONE. 127

de-magnetizations. By rapidly approaching the
poles of a horse-shoe magnet to a flat spiral coil
traversed by a current, he obtained a sound
termed the " magnetic tick." De la Eive,
Gassiot, and Marrian remarked the same phe-
nomenon in a soft iron bar surrounded by a
helix, at the moment that this helix was traversed
by a current. When these vibrations became fre-
quently interrupted, they gave rise to a distinct
sound of considerable intensity, and when the
interruptions were sufficiently rhythmic and
rapid, a musical note ensued.

Charles Bourseul, a Frenchman who in 1854
published a pamphlet on the electric transmission
of speech, foresaw clearly to what all this would
lead. " Suppose," he says, " that a man speaks
near a moveable disc sufficiently pliable to lose
none of the vibrations of the voice, that this disc
alternately makes and breaks the currents from
a battery, you may have at a distance another
disc which will simultaneously execute the same
vibrations. ... It is certain that in the more or
less distant future speech will be transmitted by
electricity."

A few years afterwards Phillip Eeis began
his experiments, and in 1868 actually succeeded
in constructing a working telephone by means of
the galvanic current. It was, however, prin-
cipally intended to reproduce musical sounds,
and although it did convey the human voice, its
powers of transmission were of a limited order.
Improvements in the musical telephone were
made by succeeding inventors ; but it was not
until 1876 when Alexander Graham Bell and

128 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

Elisha Gray, working separately and without
collusion, each produced a speaking telephone,
that the dream of articulating telephone became
realised.

Strange to relate, both inventors applied for
patents on the same day, February 14th. The
question of priority led to a celebrated lawsuit,
and ended in a compromise, one company taking
up the patents of both inventors. Bell, however,
had made important developments in his instru-
ment, while Gray did but little to improve his
invention after applying for a patent. As every
one is aware, a telephone consists of a transmitter
and a receiver, the former being the instrument
into which words are spoken, the latter the
instrument which is applied to the ear. The
receiver has remained virtually the same as
described in Bell's patent, but this is not the
case with the transmitter, which is to-day another
device altogether. In lieu of the original mag-
netic telephone, a carbon transmitter, involving
the use of a battery, is now universally em-
ployed. This invention is due to Edison, who
devised it in 1877, soon after the first Bell
telephone was made. It was subsequently re-
placed by the microphone of Hughes.

In the earlier days attempts were made to use
iron wires for both telegraph and telephone lines,
the cost of iron wire being so much less than
the cost of copper. The vast superiority of
copper wire to iron for long circuits is shown by
the fact that Rysselburg and others have spoken
clearly to a distance of over 1000 miles through
a copper wire insulated on poles, whereas Preece

PNEUMATIC TUBE DESPATCH. 129

could not work a similar line of iron wire be-
tween London and Manchester.

Telephones are now in every city in the world,
and have in many become a necessity of daily
life, on its social as well as on its economic side.

The new Government telephone system was
inaugurated in London in 1902.

Another form of rapid despatch controlled by
the Post Office, from which great results in the
carriage of human freight is still sometimes
anticipated, is that of the pneumatic tube. The
transport of written messages by the agency of
air-pressure was introduced in 1853 by La timer
Clark between the Central and Stock Exchange
telegraph stations in London. These stations
were connected bv a tube 1^ inches in diameter
and 220 yards long. Receptacles containing
batches of telegrams, getting piston-wise in the
tube, were sucked through it by the production
of a partial vacuum at one end. In 1858 Yarley
introduced compressed air to be used in conjunc-
tion with the vacuum principle for the purpose
of returning messages along the same tube. The
system grew in the hands of the Post Office, until
there are now in London alone some forty miles
of pneumatic tubes. In addition to its use for
postal and telegraphic purposes, the pneumatic
despatch is considerably employed for internal
communication in offices, hotels, etc., and also in
shops for the transport of money and bills be-
tween the cashier's desk and the counters. As
to the time taken in transit, an ordinary
" carrier " weighs 2| ozs. and holds about a
dozen despatches. With a pressure of 10 Ibs.

130 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

per square inch, or a vacuum of 7 Ibs., one
minute is required for a length of 1000 yards, and
5J minutes for a length of 3000 yards. In Paris,
where the pneumatic system dates from 1866,
large areas of the city have been covered by
pneumatic circuits made up of iron pipes,
round which long trains of " carriers" are de-
spatched at intervals of fifteen minutes. A
similar arrangement is also followed in Berlin
and Vienna. Notwithstanding all the develop-
ments which have taken place, however, in other
departments of rapid locomotion, the pneumatic
despatch has made comparatively few strides,
and the application of its principle on a large
scale is a problem for the future.

Before concluding this chapter it may be worth
while to glance back at the conditions which
formerly obtained at the Post Office.

Under the postal regime of 1820 it took as
long a time to convey a letter from Kingsland to
Camberwell, a distance of only five miles, as
some twenty years later sufficed for its trans-
mission from the Scottish to the English
capital.

The mails were first sent by the railway on
llth November 1830; as the railways extended
the Post Office authorities lost no time in availing
themselves of the means which railways offer for
expediting the transmission of letters.

Before the morning mails were established a
letter from Brighton for a town in Yorkshire
was stopped fourteen hours in London, as it
could not have been transmitted until eight
o'clock at night ; but it now reaches its clestina-

AMERICAN POSTAL SYSTEM. 131

tion (200 miles, say, from London) several hours
before it would formerly have left the post-office ;
again, the Liverpool merchant receives his foreign
letters on the same day that they reach London,
instead of thirty hours afterwards.

The travelling or railway post-office, invented
by Earle, has been adopted by all countries in
Europe.

As to the special character of the modern
postal system with reference to the saving of
time, it is now possible to post a letter in a
letter-box in all mail trains, to have it sorted in
the train and delivered at its respective town
while the train is in motion. The postman has
merely to re-sort it at its proper street and slip it
in the letter-box of its destined recipient.

Eailways carrying the mails are obliged to
observe the greatest punctuality. Very heavy
fines are imposed upon them if they are late;
and it is the same with the mail boats. Govern-
ment stipulates that the duration of the Channel
voyage shall not exceed two hours and five
minutes between the Admiralty Pier at Dover
and the Jetty at Calais. But inasmuch as this
journey is frequently done under an hour, it will
be seen that considerable margin is allowed for
these days of speed.

The postal department of America is respon-
sible for much of the quickening of the railway
trains, which during the last ten years or so has
become a prominent feature of American rail-
ways. The mail contract is given to the railway
which undertakes to convey the letters between
given points in the quickest time. Suchlucra-

132 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

tive traffic naturally causes the competing lines
to accelerate their service.

CHAPTER VII.

WHEN we consider that it is possible for a human
animal to propel himself on a pair of wheels
without the aid of steam, electricity, or any other
agent but his own muscular power, along the
earth's surface at the rate of forty-one miles an
hour, it is clear that in the bicycle mankind
possesses extraordinary means of rapid transit.
Such a means in the eighteenth century and
the first thirty years of the nineteenth would of
itself have revolutionised the mails and despatch
carrying system ; but its invention, or rather
development, being reserved until the era of
railways, of telegraphs, and even of telephones,
the economic value of the bicycle has been greatly
lessened. Yet it is not a mere instrument of
sport and exercise ; although even in that char-
acter the benefit it confers upon mankind is
enormous ; it is everywhere, in nearly all civilised
countries, an important convenience, offering
facilities for transit far superior to the horse,
and providing for all classes an always ready,
reliable and inexpensive means of rapid loco-
motion.

The modern cycle is the lineal descendant of
the " dandy " or " hobby-horse " of the early
\ years of the nineteenth century, which is to be
/found caricatured in countless prints of that
epoch. It was a bicycle with wheels attached to

EARLY BICYCLES.

133

a bar of wood rudely shaped like the body of a \
horse, the rider sitting astride it and propelling/
it with his feet upon the ground. In 1819 the'
Baron Drais de Saverbrunn constructed an im-
proved hobby-horse, and this was introduced into
England under the name of the " ceUrifire" It

" THE DANDY-HORSE."

consisted of two stout equal-sized wooden wheels
held in iron forks, the rear fork being securely
bolted to a bar of wood, the "perch " ; the front
fork passed through the perch, and was so
arranged that it could be turned by a handle,
thereby steering the machine after the manner of
a modern bicycle. In the middle of the perch

134 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

was placed a cushion on which the rider sat ; in
front of this was another and smaller cushion
elevated on a bracket, upon which he leaned his
chest. When the rider was seated astride the
" eMriftre " his feet just touched the ground ;
the machine was propelled by running with long
strides, which furnished the momentum during
which the rider rested from his efforts. Down
hill he could, of course, and did, proceed at a
breakneck pace. None of these early " dandy-
horses " were fitted with any sort of brake, they
were heavily built, and must have rushed down
an incline at a startling and dangerous speed.
Yet dangerous and ungraceful as the pastime
was, it attained great popularity; no young
beau's equipment was considered complete
without a hobby-horse; and although they
were publicly ridiculed, hobby-riding lasted for
several memorable seasons until, indeed, several
accidents damped general enthusiasm for the
sport. One wit described its votaries as gentle-
men who rode in their own carriages and walked
in the mud at the same time. In one caricature,
the blacksmiths of a posting village are seen
chasing the hobby -riders, upsetting them and
smashing their machines to fragments with
hammers, because, forsooth, the hobby-horse,
whose use threatened to become general, never
required to be shod.

In 1824 there appeared the following adver-
tisement in the Mechanic's Magazine :

" SELF-MOVING CARRIAGE.
"Mr D. M 'Donald, of Sunderland, informs ua

"SELF-MOVING CARRIAGES." 135

that he has invented a self-moving machine for
travelling on roads, which has carried seven
persons. It is propelled by means of treadles.
A man sits behind working the same, and there
is a fly-wheel operating upon two cog-wheels
which operate on a square axle. You will per-
haps think the man behind has hard labour
not so. From the velocity of the fly-wheel,
together with the aid of a lever, which is in the
hand of a person in front steering, he has not
often to put his feet to the treadles. Mr
M 'Don aid intends, when he shall have improved
the friction of the body of the carriage, to
present the same to the Society of Arts; and as
he desires to receive no emolument for the same,
he hopes it will come into general use."

In the same year there is recorded another
example of these so-called " self-moving car-
riages" invented by a carpenter of Buckland,
and another, a Welshman, describes a lever-
action machine, which accommodated three
persons, and " went with ease eight miles an
hour." All of these self-moving carriages were
to be propelled by levers. " Velocipedes," or
" carriages to go without horses," "rnani-
velociters," "bivectors," "trivectors," " accelera-
tors, " "allepodes" are amongst the names of
machines brought forth in the course of the next
forty years.

Yet, although the hobby-horse gradually dis-
appeared from fashionable circles, it had shown
that even along an ordinary road it could go
faster than a man could run, and for a much
longer period. In 1830 we learn that certain

136 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

" improved dandy-horses were supplied to the
postmen in a rural district, where they were
used for many years." But not being replaced
when they wore out (except by the railway), the
postmen had once again to trudge on foot.

Ten years later, Kirkpatrick M'Millan, a
Scotchman, made a wooden bicycle with cranks,
side levers, connecting rods and pedals. It was
used with considerable success for years, and to
its inventor, therefore, would seem to belong the
honour of making the first bicycle with cranks.
Previously, M'Millan had tried his cranks and side
levers on a tricycle in 1835. After him came
Gavin Dalzell, a Lanarkshire cooper, with a crank-
driven bicycle; and in 1862, Messrs May hew, of
Chelsea, exhibited a three-wheel velocipede, the
front wheel steering as in a modern bicycle or
the old hobby-horse, the other two smaller
wheels being placed together behind. A pair of
cranks was fitted to the front wheel, and on this
velocipede it was possible to attain a speed of over
ten miles an hour on a smooth track. Four years
later, the firm of Michaux, in Paris, sent over to
England a perfected bicycle, which, in spite of
its weight and clumsiness as compared with the
modern machine, seemed then a miracle of grace
and lightness. Several of these machines found
their way to the London gymnasiums, and
became a popular form of sport on a smooth
track. One of the earliest long journeys taken
in this country was by Mr Mayall, the photo-
grapher, who mastered the machine sufficiently
to ride from London to Redhill, in an attempt to
reach Brighton ; " he returned from Redhill by

POPULARITY OF BICYCLES. 137

train, exhausted, and covered with dust and
glory." It was only a few months before that
Mayall had seen his first bicycle at Spencer's
gymnasium. "The gymnasium was cleared/' he
writes, " Mr Turner took off his coat, grasped
the handles of the machine, and with a short run,
and to my intense surprise, vaulted on to it, and
putting his feet on the treadles, made the circuit
of the room. We were some half-dozen specta-
tors, and I shall never forget our astonishment
at the sight of Mr Turner whirling himself round
the room, sitting on a bar above* a pair of wheels
in a line that ought, as we innocently supposed,
to fall down immediately he jumped off the
ground."

It must be remembered that up to that period
the possibility of remaining upright on two
wheels, arranged bicycle-wise, was not generally
admitted.

In a short time, certain English manufacturers
began to perceive that this so-called toy had a
future : the French machines ceased to be im-
ported, owing to the improvements which were
made, and soon the manufacture of bicycles was
proceeding on a large scale at Coventry. The
changes in structure introduced greater lightness
and consequently greater speed : the sport took
hold of the public, and bicycles were encountered
on every leading road. Those who believed in
its ephemeral character, and predicted its early
relegation to obscurity, were destined to see the
error of their ways. It was found that the new
machine could carry a man forty, or fifty, and even
sixty miles a day, with less exertion than he

138 THE STORY OP LOCOMOTION.

could walk half the distance. In 1869 May all
started for Brighton at 8 A.M. and arrived at the
Old Ship at tea-time. The head-porter, who had
never seen a bicycle, was puzzled about the train
the new arrival had come by. He was told that
no train had brought him.

" Did you drive or ride a horse ? Did you
walk 1 " were next asked. " No," was the reply,
" I came down on those two wheels yonder in
the corner : and if you live long enough you will
see thousands of others who will carry travellers
to Brighton in Iralf the time it took me to come."

In 1894 Mr Wridgway travelled to Brighton
from London and back again in just over five and
a half hours.

In June 1873 it was decided to test the new
machine by a ride from London to John o'
Groats, the most northerly point of the kingdom.
Four tourists, Messrs Spencer, Hunt, Leaver and
Wood, took part in this long distance ride, on
machines which, although of the most improved
type in 1873, have little resemblance to the
Coventry productions of to-day. The four were
escorted for a few miles of their way by friends,
but soon distanced their escorts, and that evening
the message came to London that they had
reached Buckden, sixty-five miles away. On the
second day they reached Newark, thus achieving
forty-three miles. On the ninth day they gained
Edinburgh, and on the fifteenth day saw the
party safely landed at John o' Groat's, 861 miles.
This was the first long distance ride on record,
and attracted a great deal of attention : for
it brought home forcibly that a new factor of

COACHES VERSUS CYCLES. 139

speed had been introduced, which, although
inferior to the railway, yet was inferior to it
alone. How amazed even the riders would have
been to know that twenty-one years later the dis-
tance between London and Edinburgh would have
been covered on a bicycle in twenty-eight hours.

Yet it was not long after their exploit that
H. S. Tharp rode from London to York in
twenty-two and a half hours. In 1876 Smythe
and Caston rode 205 miles in twenty-two hours,
the actual time in the saddle being seventeen hours
seventeen minutes. Apropos of Tharp's perform-
ance we may compare it with the advertised jour-
ney of the regular stage-coach two centuries ago,

"York Four Days Coach Begins The 18th April,
1703. All that are desirous to pass from
London to York, or from York to London, or
any other place on that road, let them repair to
the Black Swan in Holbourne, in London, and
to the Black Swan in Coney Street, York, at
each of which places they may be received in a
stage-coach every Monday, Wednesday, and
Friday, which performs the whole journey in
four days, if God permit." A copy of the fore-
going is still preserved at the "Black Swan," York.

But the innovation was not to come into
general use, for the purpose of rapid transit,
without opposition. The medical faculty decried
it as injurious to the health, and the coachmen
and hackney cabmen followed the example of
the blacksmiths of 1819 towards the hobby-
horse. In August 1876, for instance, the driver
of the St Albans coach lashed with his whip a
bicyclist who was passing, while the guard, who

140 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

had provided himself beforehand with an iron ball
on the end of a rope, threw it between the spokes
of the machine and dragged it and the rider to
the ground. For this assault, the driver was
fined 2, the guard 5, and a further penalty
imposed of 10 for the damage of the machine.

But cycling was not to be damned by the
prejudice of ill-natured or ignorant persons ;
contests in speed became the order of the day.
In 1876, John Keen, who announced himself as
the professional bicycle champion, rode fifty miles
in three hours six minutes forty-five seconds,
and in the following year W. Tomes, of Ports-
mouth, succeeded in travelling a mile in three
minutes ten seconds.

As an illustration of the fact that the future of
cycling was not to be limited to sport alone, the
Bishop of Manchester publicly stated that a
brother bishop had suggested the use of the
bicycle in his diocese. So slow was the Con-
ference (and, indeed, the public generally) to
appreciate the value of the cycle, that this
statement was received with roars of laughter.
The Bishop of Carlisle facetiously regretted the
hilliness of his diocese, remarking that " if there
was one thing a bicycle objected to, it was going
up hill." The practical use which would be
made by the cycle by hundreds, even thousands,
of the clergy throughout the length and breadth
of the land, they could not yet foresee. Yet, in
this year (1878), the Times had this to say on
the new vehicle :

"The bicycle has come to the front and is
fighting for existence. Dimly prefigured in the

THE STEEL STEED. 141

mythical centaur, and then in the hobby-horse of
mediaeval games, and attempted in the veloci-
pede, now half a century old ; long prejudiced
by the evident superiority of wings to wheels,
the bicycle has now surmounted the difficulties of
construction, and adapted itself to human capa-
bilities it augments at least threefold the loco-
motive powers of an ordinary man. A bicyclist
can perform a journey of a hundred miles in one
day with less fatigue than he could walk thirty ;
fifty miles that is, from London to Brighton
as easily as he could walk ten; and a daily journey
to and fro between London and the distant suburbs
with just the usual results of moderate exercise."

In August 1879, H. Blackwell, jun., travelled on
the " steel steed " from London to John o' Groat's
in eleven days four hours, while at Stamford
Bridge, on a prepared track, a mile was run by
Keen in two minutes fifty-two and one-fifth
seconds.

When, in 1880, it was decided by the munici-
pal authorities of Coventry to mount its police
officers upon the new machine, the circumstance
created widespread interest. One commentator,
however, suggested that a defaulting debtor
pursued by a constable mounted on a tricycle
and armed with a summons, sounds more like a
horrible dream than a probable reality, and
quoted Tennyson's

" New men, who in the flying of a wheel
Cry down the past,"

as suitable to the innovation. It may be men-
tioned that the tricycle dated from 1878, and
was the invention of James Starley of Coventry.

142 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

It was soon found possible to make great speed
on the tricycle, and five years after its introduc-
tion C. H. E. Gosset covered over 200 miles in
the course of twenty-four hours on the road. At
this time, of course, it must be borne in mind
that the ordinary bicycle consisted of one great
wheel five feet in height, and a smaller one
behind only eighteen inches in diameter. The
" safety " bicycle, as it was called, did not become
general until 1890, and the "ordinary" held its
own, until the advent of the inflated tyre made
the new machine superior both from the point of
view of speed and comfort.

What was regarded as an astonishing feat
occurred in 1886, when G. P. Mills travelled on
a bicycle from Land's End to John o' Groat's, a
distance of 861 miles, in five days one hour forty-
five minutes. Some weeks later the same cyclist
rode a tricycle over the same course in five days
ten hours, or thirty hours faster than it had ever
been done before.

As time went on great and still greater speed
came to be attained on the cycle speed which
would have caused the early champions of the
"silent steed" to gasp in astonishment. In
1890, in a race viewed by the Prince of Wales,
F. J. Osmond accomplished a mile in one minute
fifty-five seconds on an old-fashioned high bicycle.
But the limit of speed on this form of machine
had now been reached : the " safety " and the
inflated tyre rendered new records possible, and
the " ordinary " was soon afterwards completely
superseded.

Although the cyclists had already surpassed

SPEED BY CYCLISTS. 143

the speed attained by the fast coaches in the
halcyon days of coaching, yet the coaching
revival was to witness several new records, the
most celebrated being the performance of July
1888 between London and Brighton. In that
month, James Selby drove the Brighton coach
from the " White Horse Cellars," Piccadilly, via
Croydon, Merstham, Eed Hill, Horley, Crawley,
Hand Cross, Cuckfield, and Clayton to Brighton
and back, a distance of 108 miles in seven hours
fifty minutes. This remarkable feat was done
with sixteen changes of horses.

It was taken as a challenge by the cyclists,
who at once attempted to beat it. At first they
met with ill success, but at last the journey was
done in eight hours thirty-six minutes nineteen
and two-fifth seconds, by four riders using the
same machine and dividing the journey into four
stages. This, however, was not considered satis-
factory. P. C. Wilson and M. A. Holbein made
an attempt, single handed, but failed, and it was
not until 1890 on an inflated-tyre "safety"
cycle, that F. Shorland effected the journey in
seven hours nineteen minutes. This achieve-
ment created great enthusiasm, and was com-
monly regarded as an unbreakable record. Yet
it was not long before S. F. Edge, not only for
the first time beat the coach time for the outward
journey (three hours eighteen minutes twenty-
five seconds), but did the whole in seven hours
two minutes fifty seconds.

This was the fastest time ever achieved on a
public turnpike by any vehicle whatsoever in
Great Britain, and therefore probably in the

144 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

world. Yet fast as it was, it was to be beaten
again and again, before the advent of the motor
car was to demolish all road records ; and in 1894,
C. J. Wridgway accomplished the excursion in
five hours thirty-five minutes thirty-two seconds ;
even a tricycle, ridden by W. R. Toft, achieving it
in six hours twenty-one minutes thirty seconds.

As to other examples of the velocity which
can be, and has been attained on the road by
means of the cycle, we might mention that the
journey from London to York, 197 miles, has
been done in eleven hours fifty-one minutes ; and
London to Edinburgh, 400 miles, in twenty-eight
hours twenty-seven minutes ; and London to
Liverpool in thirteen hours four minutes. One
hundred miles have been covered in four hours
thirty-nine minutes twenty-eight seconds, and
half that distance in two hours seven minutes
and fifteen seconds. Great as these instances are,
they are surpassed by the speed of the cycle on
a prepared track, where 100 miles have been
done in two hours, thirty-three minutes, forty
seconds ; and fifty miles in one hour fourteen
minutes, fifty-five seconds.

The cycle, as a useful means of transit, is in
universal employment by all classes. In the
country it is a favourite method of progression.
The tradesmen's emissary adopts it in lieu of the
horse and cart for the delivery of parcels, and it
is in common use by rural postmen. On the
whole, the cycle as a means of rapid transit
deserves a prominent place in contemporary
economy, quite apart from the facilities it offers
for exercise and sport.

ROAD LOCOMOTIVES. 145

CHAPTER VIII.

WE have already said in an earlier chapter how
the necessity for the speedy conveyance of
passengers and merchandise came to be widely
felt in England early in the last century. If
railways had not appeared upon the scene the
development of a new agent of speed would have
been inevitable, and that agent would have been
the motor car. Railway travelling for the past
seventy years has been at best a compromise.
The ideal is, of course, a conveyance capable of
travelling easily and swiftly to any destination,
and not restricted to lengths of rail fixed along a
certain route. Railways promptly checked the
development of the steam locomotive for the
common roads. It was found unnecessary to
strive towards the production of a light, speedy
vehicle, when a heavy one on an iron track
would do as well. Thus, all the early loco-
motives were what we now designate as motor
cars, and are by no means of recent introduction.
Du Halde relates that about the year 1700 the
Jesuit missionaries in China invented certain
mechanical curiosities for the entertainment of
the Emperor Kang-hi. They caused a waggon to
be made of light wood, about two feet long, in
the middle whereof they placed a brazen vessel
full of live coals, and upon them an eolipile, the
wind of which issued through a little pipe upon
a sort of wheel made like the sail of a wind-mill.
The little wheel turned another with an axle
tree, and by that means the waggon was set
a-running for two hours together. The same

146 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

contrivance was likewise applied to a little ship
with four wheels ; the eolipile was hidden in the
middle of the ship, and the wind issuing out of
the two small pipes filled the little sails and
made them turn round a long time.

It is a matter of conjecture whether this de-
notes a kind of steam or hot-air engine. It is,
however, significant that not many years after
Cugnot produced a steam-carriage in Paris,
which, after having been proved inefficient, was
abandoned, and is still to be seen in the Con-
servatoire des Arts et Metiers. In 1772, an
American, Oliver Evans, commenced experiments
with steam with a view to employing it as a
substitute for animal power. Evans was san-
guine enough to declare that steam would one
day be the prime agent of locomotion ; and
frequently predicted that the time would come
when travellers would be conveyed on good
turnpike-roads at fifteen miles an hour or 300
miles a day by a device resembling his own.
During the next thirty years innumerable were
the attempts of English inventors to employ
steam-power on common roads. The outlook
appeared encouraging ; for once they had suc-
ceeded with their engine, they need not trouble
about railways ; excellent highways already
existed along which to conduct traffic. In the
part of this book relating to railways, mention
has already been made of the Cornishman,
Trevethick's experiments. Griffiths introduced
a steam carriage in 1821 ; another by Gordon in
the following year was contrived to work inside
a large iron drum, as a squirrel runs in his revolv-

148 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

ing cage, but was quickly abandoned. Gurney
next produced his engine, which was marked by
clever construction, the objectionable noise being
overcome by causing the waste steam to enter a
chamber from whence it issued with a steady
and noiseless current to the funnel. In 1826 it
performed the journey from London to Bath, at
which time other competitors were in the field.
Dance, Maceroni, Church and Hancock each
produced a road locomotive. In 1831, Gurney
had three steam carriages running for the con-
veyance of passengers on the road between
Cheltenham and Gloucester, four trips being
made daily, at a greater rate of speed than that
of the stage-coaches on the same nine miles of
road and at half their fares.

This success betokened the permanency of the
new enterprise, but prejudice was strong; a
formidable opposition was organised, injurious
reports were circulated and all travellers cautioned
against trusting themselves to the dangers of
steam. A more effectual hindrance was offered
by the parochial authorities, who covered a
portion of the road to a depth of eighteen inches
with loose stones. While attempting to sur-
mount this impediment the working axle of the
engine was broken and a stop thereby put to
steam locomotion in this quarter, for a time.
Ere the inventor could renew it local opposition
had crushed the whole enterprise.

While this was happening to automobiles at
Cheltenham, Hancock started a steam-carriage
the Infant to run between Stratford and
London. It excited much attention owing to

STEAM CARRIAGES.

149

the compactness and efficiency of its arrange-
ments, and led to attempts in other quarters.
It was even proposed by the more sanguine
projectors to run steam omnibuses in all the
great thoroughfares of London a consummation
which has only been brought about after a period
of some eighty years as well as in the suburban
districts, and coaches for Birmingham and Bristol.

STEAM ROAD COACH, 1833.

Hancock built nine carriages altogether, the
first being the Infant and the Era, built in 1831-2.
The latter was intended to run the coach between
London and Greenwich, but the Company for
which it was built never got into working order.
Another, however, the London and Paddingtoii
Steam Carriage Company, was started in 1832,
and Hancock's next carriage was built to its
order. The fourth, he ran daily for twenty-four
weeks between Finsbury Square and Pentonville.
But although thousands of passengers were
carried by these vehicles, yet commercial success

150 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

was not very promising for town service at the
time, and extended practice and experience were
required to make what, even with good roads,
would have proved attractive and successful
vehicles. Frequent mishaps occurred, and it is
to be feared that the comfort of the vehicles was
not even up to the standard of the time. The
passengers were all in front of the machinery,
but with powerful and unbalanced engines, and
with the rough chain gear, the vibration was
considerable. One, for example, had cylinders
no less than nine inches in diameter, and these
engines had no fly-wheels. Yet, after all, these
things were matters for improvement, which
would have naturally followed demand for the
coaches, and for improved tools and methods of
building.

When Summers and Ogle were examined
before the Select Committee of the House of
Commons in 1831, they stated that with one of
the two steam-carriages of their construction,
they had frequently made thirty miles an hour.
It was certainly a daring thing these men did in
using steam pressures of over 200 Ibs. per square
inch, in those days of imperfect boilers.

The coaches built by Hills about 1840 would
carry nine passengers and a driver, conductor and
stoker, at considerable speed, on the precipitous
route between London and Hastings. This jour-
ney of 128 miles was done in a single day.

But all of these steam coaches and carriages
were one after another abandoned, until after
the disappearance of HilFs carriage in 1843
not one was left on the road, and none are,

152 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

so far as is known, preserved. The boorish
and unjust treatment meted out to these pioneers
effectually put an end to progress in steam
road locomotion, so far as this country was con-
cerned, and further harsh and narrow-minded
legislation from 1861 to 1878 further prevented
England from taking advantage of the progress
which had been made on the Continent.

Although Great Britain had for half a century
been as near to a practical self-moving carriage
as was France when Serpollet, Bolide, Scotte, and
De Dion and Bouton began in the early 'nineties,
and before the celebrated invention of Gottlieb
Daimler enabled Levassor to build his high
speed internal combustion motor, and Benz had
demonstrated its practicability, this country also
possessed the Daimler motor and was aware of
Benz's labours, but it would have been futile
to attempt to make a motor carriage when
Englishmen were without the freedom to use
their own roads.

The common roads were consecrated to the
uses of horses, latterly of cyclists : to use a
mechanically propelled vehicle upon them was
considered an outrage. The opponents, therefore,
of rapid transit upon the common roads retarded
progress and experiment for full sixty years.

Nevertheless, although British inventors were
denied facilities for progress in their country,
the British public was very quick to reap the
benefits slowly derived through foreign genius
and industry. France lent free roads to Bolide,
Serpollet, Le Blant, and others turned out a
succession of ingenious steam vehicles, but it

ill

154 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

was not until the advent of the Daimler motor
and the Benz motor cars, that any real, rapid
and continuous progress was made across the
Channel.

We have now witnessed the successful employ-
ment of steam for traction, and while the world
is anxiously waiting for the development of
electricity, a new agent appears. Experiments
had long been made with gas and hot air as the
motive power of engines : science was now ready
to experiment with oil and carburetted air. It
was known that the lighter oils, such as
petroleum spirit (petrol), or gasoline, or benzo-
line will all evaporate readily in presence of air
and especially in air in motion. When the air
is saturated with the oil, i.e. contains 17*5 per
cent., it will burn, giving a fine white light.
Such a mixture of oil, vapour, and air will also
burn with explosive rapidity under the circum-
stances of its combustion in a gas or oil cylinder.

Gottlieb Daimler, who had been for some years
occupied in gas engine construction, turned his
attention to the production of small light petrol
motors, made highly powerful by their capability
of running continuously at very high speeds of
rotation. In 1884 he patented his first high
speed gas engine, and in the following year
applied his improved invention to a bicycle.
This machine was rather clumsy in appearance,
but it excited then the deepest interest.

Early in the development of the Daimler motor
certain French firms turned their attention to it
in very small sizes for propelling tricycles. In
1896 a Dion tricycle ran in the Paris-Marseilles

EARLY PETROL MOTORS 155

race, making an average speed over the whole
distance of 1 4 *8 miles an hour. In 1899 a motor
tricycle accomplished 28*1 miles an hour, being
fitted with a If h.-p. motor, or twice the power
of the first mentioned. A year or two later these
tricycles were fitted with 2 '25 h.-p. motors, and
some with two-speed gear. They soon became
exceedingly popular machines, many persons
accomplishing long journeys regularly upon
them. In the Paris-Malo race of 1899, 231 miles
were covered in seven hours eleven minutes, an
average of 32 '2 miles per hour.

Carl Benz of Mannheim in 1 886 took out a patent
for an oil spirit motor tricycle. In this car the
piston in the cylinder was connected to a vertical
crank-shaft. In the second car made by Benz he
ran at about ten miles an hour, while two years
later, in 1888, he secured a speed of from twelve to
fifteen miles an hour. The inventor seems to
have given his cars more liberal size of engine for
such small vehicles than many succeeding makers
in their first efforts.

It was not until MM. Panhard & Lavassor, of
Paris, acquired the Daimler motor rights that
the new automobile became popular.

Up to that time, the future of self-propelled
carriages seemed to be solely either with steam
or electricity. In 1880 the elder Bollee of Mans
constructed a steam coach, which went at the
rate of ten miles an hour, and numerous auto-
mobiles were built during that decade. In 1889
Leon Serpollet invented and made the instan-
taneous generator or boiler now widely known
by his name. As at first constructed, this

156 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION,

generator was composed of a large number of flat
tubes, with only a capillary water space. The
tubes were surrounded by a coating of cast-iron,
which rendered them very heavy, but protected
the steel tube from rapid corrosion in the high
heat of the furnace in and above which they were
placed. It also acted as a heat accumulator
during the time when the engines were stopped,
and no water was being pumped through for
evaporation. The boiler gave very high pressure
steam considerably superheated. Various modi-
fications of form subsequently took place, and in
1895 one of Serpollet's carriages was brought to
England and tested, the trials exciting consider-
able scientific interest. But by that time as
many as ninety oil or gas driven machines on the
Daimler principle had been turned out in Paris,
and in order to test the respective merits of the
two species of automobile, a race was organised
between Paris and Eouen, 79*4 miles. The race
was won by a De Dion & Bouton steam tractor,
to which was attached an ordinary landau. It
made an average speed of twelve miles an hour,
and was shown at the first exhibition of motor
cars in England, that organised by Sir David
Salomons in October 1894.

But the superiority of steam was not to be
long maintained. Another race between Paris
and Bordeaux, 750 miles, occurred in June 1895,
when M. Levassor drove one of his automobiles
over the route in forty-eight hours forty-eight
minutes at a mean speed of about fifteen miles
an hour on the whole run, with a maximum
speed of eighteen miles. The carriage weighed

EARLY PETROL MOTORS. 157

about twelve hundredweight, and won the race,
a Peugeot car, also equipped with a petrol
motor, coming second.

From that race to the present time, the
triumph of the mineral spirit motor has been
marked.

In 1896 in the race from Paris to Marseilles, a
distance of 1060 miles, no fewer than thirty-two
vehicles started, a Panhard motor covering the
distance in sixty-seven hours forty-three minutes,
or an average speed of 15-62 miles per hour over
the whole of that long run. There were three
steam cars among the competitors, but all failed
from one cause or another, one, however, only
owing to the break-down of its pneumatic tyres,
for which it was too heavy.

Nevertheless, a De Dion steam brake run by
the Marquis de Chasseloup-Loubat won the Mar-
seilles-Nice race in January 1897, achieving the
journey of 144J miles in seven hours forty-five
minutes, or eighteen miles an hour. When, fully
loaded this brake, with passengers, weighed
nearly three tons, but on this run it reached
higher speeds than had previously been made,
thirty-six miles an hour being attained for short
distances.

The records of speed in motor cars quickly
began to be lowered. In the Paris-Dieppe race
in 1897, a mean speed of twenty-five miles an
hour was reached, which placed the automobile
on a par with the bicycle in the matter of speed
over common roads. The Paris- Amsterdam race
in 1898 showed 27*7 miles an hour; in 1899 the
Versailles-Bordeaux race, 344 miles without a

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160 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

single stop, at an average of 30*2 miles for the
whole journey, occasionally its speed reaching
fifty miles an hour. This was accomplished on a
Panhard motor car carrying two persons, weigh-
ing one ton, and fitted with a twelve to fifteen
horse-power motor.

In the United Kingdom, in 1896, after much
agitation, an Act was passed making it legal to
drive self-propelled vehicles on the public roads
without their being preceded by a man carrying
a red flag, and removing many other ridiculous
regulations which were still in force. Immediately
a vast motor industry sprang up in the country,
and petrol motors were employed to propel every
form of luxuriously fitted carriage, private
omnibus, sporting car, light delivery van or
lorry.

In the next year the Automobile Club of Great
Britain and Ireland, which has done so much to
forward the progress of the automobile in this
country, was formed. From that time onward
the motor industry has progressed by leaps and
bounds.

Modern petrol motors are exactly similar in
principle to the much older gas engine, in which
the sudden and rapid combustion (or explosion)
of a mixture of coal gas and air in the cylinder
causes the air to expand enormously, thus forc-
ing outwards the movable piston by which the
cylinder is closed.

In places where coal gas is not available oil
engines are frequently used. In these the coal
gas is replaced by the vapour of petroleum, and
attempts are constantly being made to use

MODERN PETROL MOTORS. 161

petroleum (or paraffin) or other heavy oils for
automobile engines. Petroleum, however, can
only be vapourised at a very high temperature,
and has other disadvantages, as, for instance, the
smell which accompanies its use and the rapidity
with which it clogs the cylinders with deposit.

For the great majority of automobile engines
(and for aeroplanes and all purposes where a light
high speed internal combustion engine is required)
the motive power is derived from petroleum spirit,
or petrol, which is distilled from paraffin. Its
chief drawback, as compared with paraffin, is the
much greater danger of fire owing to the ease
with which it gives off inflammable vapour.

Opening into a cylinder are two valves, the in-
let and the exhaust valves, which normally are
held tightly closed by springs. The mechanism
of the engine is so arranged that at the correct
moments they are automatically opened and
closed. The care and adjustment of these valves
plays an important part in the successful manage-
ment of the engine.

All external combustion engines have to be
started by hand (or other external agency). In
doing this the piston is first drawn outwards,
thus drawing the " carburetted " air (or mixture
of petrol vapour and air) into the cylinder
through the' open inlet valve.

The piston then returns, compressing the gases
into the head of the cylinder (the valves now
being closed). They now occupy a space equal
to something between one-tenth and one-fifth of
their previous volume.

As soon as this compression stroke is complete
L

162 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

an electric device produces an electric spark inside
the cylinder head, exploding the charge. The
piston is then forced outward, making the third
or working stroke. When it reaches its limit
the exhaust valve is automatically opened and
the piston returns, sweeping the burnt gases out
through the open valve. The next outward
stroke draws in a fresh charge, and the cycle is
repeated.

It will thus be seen that a working stroke
occurs once in every four strokes of the piston,
the momentum imparted to the engine by the
working stroke carrying it on for the next three
strokes. This is known as a four cycle, or Otto
cycle engine, having been brought into practical
use by Dr N. A. Otto, and is the method generally
adopted. A two cycle engine, in which every
outward stroke of the piston is a working stroke,
is sometimes used, particularly for American
motor launches.

The first carburettors, as used on all the early
motor cars, were of the " surface type." In these
a current of air was drawn over the surface of the
petrol in the carburettor, the surface being auto-
matically kept at a constant level. The air thus
became charged with petrol vapour. This type
had many drawbacks. The constant splashing
caused the quality of the mixture to be always
altering, and the lighter constituents of the petrol
evaporated quickly, leaving the heavier or " stale "
portion. In modern forms a jet of petrol is
sprayed against a conical surface. At the same
time a stream of air is drawn through, and by this
means a mixture constant in quality is obtained.

CARBURETTORS. 163

The amount of air [in the mixture is usually
regulated automatically, but in many engines an
additional air inlet, controlled by hand, is pro-
vided, as an exact adjustment of the proportions
of air and vapour in the mixture, varying with
the engine speed, the state of the atmosphere
and many other considerations, is necessary for
efficient and economical working.

A suitable charge having been drawn into the
cylinder and compressed, we will now consider
the means of ignition. On the earliest motor cars
this was effected by allowing the gas to enter a
heated platinum tube raised to white heat by an
external flame. This was soon discarded owing
to the danger of fire, and electrical methods are
now universally employed.

An electric spark is made to pass between two
insulated metal points (the arrangement being
known as a sparking plug), screwed into the
cylinder head.

The necessary electric current may be pro-
vided either by a dry cell, a storage battery, or
a " low-tension magneto-generator " in conjunc-
tion with an induction coil. Just as the engine
is completing its compression stroke the current
passes through the primary circuit of the in-
duction coil, producing a high-tension current in
the secondary circuit (which is joined to the
sparking plug in the cylinder), and a spark jumps
the gap.

In another system a magneto-generator so con-
structed as to produce a high-tension current
direct without the intervention of an induction
coil is employed. This is extremely simple and

164 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

reliable, but has the disadvantage that the engine
must always be started by hand, which, with
some forms of battery ignition, is frequently
not necessary. Many cars are fitted with both
systems.

As may be imagined, the continual succession
of explosions (at full speed there are often over
1200 per minute) would soon render the engine
excessively hot, so that means of cooling have
to be employed. This is effected by surround-
ing the cylinder with a hollow cast-iron jacket,
through which a stream of water is kept con-
stantly circulating, usually by means of a small
pump. The heated water passes from the
cylinder to a radiator in the front of the car. The
radiator may be described as practically a long
series of tubes, presenting a large cooling surface
for the atmosphere to act upon. The rush of air
as the car progresses (often assisted by a revolv-
ing fan placed behind the radiator) rapidly cools
the heated water, which passes back again to the
water jacket. Thus a constant flow is kept up,
and the engine remains cool.

The speed of the engine is controlled by a
valve regulating the amount of the charge taken
into the cylinder from the carburettor; by
varying the proportions of gas and air in the
mixture ; and by advancing or retarding the
ignition. There is a particular moment in the
cycle when the explosion in the cylinder has a
maximum effect. Jf ignition is delayed so that
the explosion only occurs when part of the work-
ing stroke has been completed, there is consider-
able loss of power, and a slower speed results.

166 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

Power may be increased by increasing the size
of the cylinder, but in practice it is found better
to increase the number rather than the size of
the cylinders. Two, three, four, six, and in
racing cars even eight cylinders are employed,
the most usual number being four. They are
so arranged that the working strokes occur in
regular succession, and smooth, steady running
is thus obtained. Multi-cylinder engines have
many advantages over single cylinder motors
in addition to smoothness of running, as, for
instance, ease of starting and control.

One noticeable point in the general develop-
ment is the marked increase in the power of
engines employed. Levassor's car, which won
the Paris-Bordeaux race in 1895, was fitted with
a four horse-power engine. Nowadays, engines of
15, 20, 30 or 40 horse-power are commonly used
for touring cars, whilst racers are frequently
provided with monster engines of 80 or 100
horse-power.

The most important development in engine
construction during recent years has been the
invention by Mr Knight of the sliding sleeve
valve, first brought into practical use by the
Daimler Company. The usual mushroom-
shaped, spring-controlled valves are replaced by
two sleeves which slide between the cylinder and
the piston. These sleeves have ports (or open-
ings) cut in them, which are arranged so as to
coincide with the inlet and exhaust openings
at the correct moments. An unusually silent
engine is thus obtained of which great things are
predicted.

THE TRANSMISSION SYSTEM. 167

The power from the engine is transmitted
(through a clutch and gear box) to the driving
wheels of the car by means of either a chain
drive or (more frequently) a " live axle " drive.
In the early days belts were used, but they are
now only employed for motor cycles. Chain
drive is the simpler form, the chain being similar
to, but much larger than the chains used on
bicycles. In the other system the power passes
direct from the gear box through a long shaft
(the " cardan shaft ") under the centre of the car
to the back axle, which rotates with the wheels
(hence "live axle"). To allow for the difference
of speed of the two driving wheels in turning
corners, the axle has to be constructed in two
parts, which are driven by the cardan shaft
through an arrangement of gear wheels known
as the " differential gear."

The clutch usually consists of a tapered, leather-
faced projection on the forward end of the driving
shaft, which normally is pressed tightly into the
inside of the engine fly-wheel by means of power-
ful springs, so that the shaft and fly-wheel turn
together. When it is desired to stop the trans-
mission of power to the wheels without stopping
the engine, the clutch may be withdrawn by
pressing a pedal.

On most cars the speed of the engine is so
arranged that, when travelling at an ordinary
pace, there is a direct drive from the clutch to
the differential without the interposition of any
gear wheels. For hill climbing and for starting
from rest, when the car is travelling slowly and
it is desirable that the engine should run at full

168 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

speed to develop its full power, a series of gear
wheels, enclosed in an aluminium gear box, are
brought into play. By means of a lever various
gearwheels may be made to engage with each other,
and so two or three variations may be obtained in
the ratio of the speed of the engine to the speed of
the driving wheels. Another train of gear wheels
in the gear box allows of a reversing motion.

For the control of the car the driver is pro-
vided, in addition to the clutch pedal and gear
lever, with a foot brake and hand brake, and
usually an " accelerator pedal." By pressing the
latter the throttle is opened wider, thus admit-
ting more gas to the cylinders and increasing
speed and power. On most cars there is a lever
for advancing the spark, as already described, and
sometimes another for regulating the supply of
air to the carburettor. The battery and induc-
tion coil (when fitted), and some arrangement
for controlling or watching the efficient lubrica-
tion of the engine (on many modern cars a
constant circulation of oil is kept up by means
of a pump), complete the apparatus usually fitted
to the dashboard of the car, and immediately
under the control of the driver.

Perhaps the weakest spot in a modern car is
its pneumatic tyres. Many attempts have been
made, so far unsuccessfully, to invent a non-
puncturable tyre. To avoid the necessity of
repairing a damaged tyre on the road many
clever devices are in use. Detachable rims or
detachable wheels are frequently fitted, or spare
wheels or rims, which may be readily attached
to the damaged wheel, are carried.

STEAM CARS. 169

Although in much more general use, the
petrol motor has not entirely supplanted the
steam-driven car. The latter is more costly to
run, but has ceitain advantages. It is very
smooth running, is easily controlled, and is an
excellent hill climber. Moreover, no speed-
changing gear is required, as the necessary speed
variation may be obtained by a throttle valve,
and the engine does not lose power at low
speeds. The engine, too, may be readily re-
versed, so that reversing gear is unnecessary.

In a modern steam car the supply of fuel and
water is almost entirely automatically controlled.
A steam generator of the " flash " type is used
instead of an old-fashioned boiler. This type
of generator is due to M. Serpollet, who first
experimented with it in 1888. At each stroke of
the engine a small quantity of water is injected
into a heated coil, and is there instantaneously
converted into steam. A great advantage of
the steam car is that paraffin instead of petrol
may be used as fuel. Steam cars are especial
favourites in America.

Of all forms of self-propelled vehicles the
electric carriage is the quietest, smoothest run-
ning and most cleanly. The weight of the
batteries required, the comparatively short dis-
tance that can be attained without recharging,
the difficulty of obtaining an electric current
for recharging except in large towns, and the
length of time required for this operation, have
so far prevented the electric car being used for
any other purpose than as a town runabout, for
which use it is pre-eminently suited. One or two

170 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

electric motors, connected to the driving wheels
by a chain or gear wheel, are connected to the
whole or part of the battery, according to the
speed required, by the controller.

Great things were expected of the new Edison
or nickel-iron battery when it was introduced
some years ago. Although a manifest improve-
ment, it has not as yet rendered the electrically
propelled vehicle as popular as was anticipated.
Instead of prepared lead plates dipping into dilute
sulphuric acid, the Edison battery consists of
plates of nickel and iron immersed in a solution
of potash. Although a larger number of cells are
required, the whole battery is lighter and more
efficient than a lead battery. A nickel-iron
battery weighing 820 Ibs. will do the work of a
lead battery weighing 1440 Ibs,, so that with the
same battery weight the new battery will carry
an electric car nearly twice the distance previously
possible without recharging. The new battery
requires less attention and is cleaner than the old,
and the potash solution only requires renewing
about once a year. Its cost, however, is against
it, for expensive as is the lead battery, the Edison
battery costs fifty per cent. more. It is certainly
a step in the right direction, but the world is
still awaiting, for this and for many other pur-
poses, the discovery of a light, cheap and efficient
storage battery. There is a huge fortune await-
ing its lucky inventor.

In 1900 the first race for the international
trophy offered by the Automobile Club of France
was held. It was won by M. Charron on a
Pan hard car, who covered the course at the rate

LONG DISTANCE TRIALS. 171

of 38 J miles per hour. The next year the Gordon-
Bennett trophy was again won by a Pan hard car ;
but in 1902 Mr S. F. Edge with his Napier car
captured it for England with a speed of thirty-four
miles per hour. The following year there was a
considerable increase in speed, the race being won
by the German Mercedes at an average speed of
over forty-nine miles per hour. The next two
years the trophy was captured by French cars.

After 1905 the Gordon-Bennett race was
discontinued, and for the next three years the
Grand Prix was held instead. Another increase
of speed took place, the pace of the winning cars
for the three years being sixty-three, seventy and
sixty-two miles per hour respectively.

The year 1907 was an important one in the
development of motoring. It was in this year
that the Brooklands track, near Weybridge, was
opened. This was the first specially constructed
automobile track in the world, and provided
opportunities not only for racing, but for extended
tests of cars such as had never before existed.
On the new track Mr S. F. Edge made a time
record, which has never been beaten, by driving
1581 miles 1310 yards in twenty- four hours, an
average of 65*9 miles per hour.

In the sams year a severely practical test was
held, when three cars set out from Peking to
travel across the Goli Desert, Siberia, Russia and
Germany to Paris. They started on 10th July,
and on 10th August Prince S. Borghesi on a forty
horse-power Itala car reached Paris.

In the following year a still longer test was
carried out, three cars starting from New York,

172 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

travelling across America to the Pacific coast,
where they were shipped to China, and from
there repeating the course of the previous year.
A Protos car was the first to arrive at Paris on
26th July, 164 days after leaving New York.

The highest speed ever accomplished in an
automobile is 127*877 miles per hour, which is
the rate at which Heniery covered half a mile
from a flying start at Brooklands in 1909. This
only just exceeds the previous record of 127*7
miles per hour made in 1906 by Marriott at
Ormond Beach, where he covered a mile at this
high rate of speed. The mile record from a stand-
ing start was also made at Ormond Beach in the
same year by Macdonald, his speed being 96*3
miles per hour.

During recent years the attention of de-
signers has been turned to the production of
automobiles that are reliable and comfortable
under ordinary touring conditions, quiet and
economical in working, rather than to the manu-
facture of these track racing monsters, in which
everything is sacrificed to speed. The speed of
the modern car has reached its limit for all
practical purposes, and it is unlikely that many
fresh records will be made, at least for some
years to come.

The rapid increase in the use of self-propelled
vehicles after the passing of the Act of 1896
rendered necessary the Motor Car Act of 1903,
which imposed a speed limit of twenty miles an
hour on all cars driven on the public roads,
established a system of compulsory registration
of all cars in the United Kingdom, made it

HUMAN FLIGHT. 173

necessary for all drivers of self-propelled vehicles
to hold a licence, and enacted various other regula-
tions for the safety of the public.

In 1910 a tax of threepence a gallon was
placed on petrol, and the duties on motor car
licences were increased in accordance with the
recommendations of a Royal Commission. The
Commission also recommended the abolition of
the speed limit except for villages and small
towns, where a limit of twelve miles per hour
(which already exists in many dangerous places
by order of the Local Government Board, under
powers given them by the Act of 1903) was
advised. At present this recommendation has
not been made law.

CHAPTER IX.

IN the whole story of locomotion nothing is
more remarkable than the history of man's
attempts at flight. For a thousand years or
more the problem seemed impossible of solution.
Nevertheless, Franklin, speaking of the science
of aeronautics, declared, "It is an infant, but
it will grow." Long after Franklin's day it
seemed as though the great scientist's prophecy
would never be fulfilled. For many years the
infant refused to make any perceptible progress.
It was not, indeed, until the opening years of
the present century that human flight was finally
proved to be within the bounds of practical
possibility. Now, however, the many years of

174

THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

patient experimenting without apparent result
are having their effect, and the art of flying is
bounding forward at a more than astonishing
pace.

AN AIRSHIP DESIGNED BY FRANCTS LANA OF BARCELONA, 1670.

That all the efforts of the many clever men
who attacked this ancient problem for so long
came to naught, was due as much to the fact that
general engineering science was not sufficiently
advanced as to the want of understanding of the
aeronautical problems involved. Only when the

AN EARLY ATTEMPT. 175

development of the petrol motor provided a con-
venient source of power without the necessity
of carrying excessively heavy and cumbersome
machinery was the road to success thrown open, j

Even now there are many problems to be
solved and many difficulties to be overcome. It
may be that we are still only at the beginning of
the science of flight, and that some entirely new
form of machine may be invented which will
surpass in wonder the performances of the ever-
surprising aeroplane.

The earliest recorded attempt appears in the
Ministre's History of Lyons : " Towards the end
of Charlemagne's reign, certain persons who
lived near Mount Pilate, in Switzerland, know-
ing by what means pretended sorcerers travelled
through the air, resolved to try the experiment,
and compelled some poor people to ascend in an
aerostal. This descended in the town of Lyons,
where they were immediately hurried to prison,
the mob desiring their death as sorcerers. The
judges condemned them to be burned : but the
Bishop Agobard suspended the execution, and
sent for them to his palace that he might
question them."

When the good prelate had heard their tale of
the singular manner in which they had travelled
so far in so incredibly brief space of time, he
pardoned them, although himself incredulous.
Posterity, which reads this story, may likewise
share the bishop's incredulity. Francis Lana of
Barcelona was said to have invented an aerial
machine in 1670, but it failed to travel: where-
fore we may wisely pass over a host of similar

176 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

relations, as well as all the aerostatic experiments
up to the invention of the balloon by the brothers
Montgolfier in 1783.

Nearly ten months had elapsed since this first
aerostatic experiment, when a young chemist,
Pilatre de E/ozier, offered himself as the first
voyager in the newly -in vented aerial machine.
The first to make an aerial voyage (in the
horizontal sense) in England was a Neapolitan,
Vincent Lunardi : on the 15th September 1784,
he travelled from the Artillery Ground, Moor-
fields, to Standon, near Ware, Herts, a distance
of 30 miles. The journey was not remarkable
for speed, as it occupied two hours and a
quarter, including a stoppage at South Mimms.
"The departure was most exciting." " Perhaps,"
observed the Morning Post of the following day,
"the English nation never witnessed upon anj
occasion whatever such a number of persons
collected together and so loftily displayed ; not
a plain or an eminence, a window or a roof, a
chimney or a steeple but were prodigiously
thronged." Lunardi became a popular hero,
was presented to the King, and made a honorary
member of several learned societies.

Four days later, in Paris, the brothers Robert
performed a journey in the air from Paris to
Arras, 150 miles, a portion of the trip being
made at the rate of twenty-four miles an hour.
This journey is remarkable as being probably the
fastest ever made by human beings for such a
distance, up to that era.

But this record of speed was soon to be
broken. Sadler, an English aeronaut, ascended

EARLY AERIAL VOYAGE.

178 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

from Oxford on the 12th October of the same
year, going fourteen miles in forty-one minutes,
descending, and after considerable delay, pro-
ceeding to Romsey, in Hampshire, at the rate of
twenty-nine miles an hour.

A memorable aerial voyage the first across
the English Channel took place on 7th January
1785. Blanchard, a Frenchman, and Dr Jeffries,
an American, pushed off in a balloon from the
cliff at Dover at 1 P.M. The weight being too
great for the power of the balloon, some time
was consumed in discharging ballast. When
they rose, they continued vertically, so that
properly the journey did not commence until
half-past one. Exactly at three o'clock, after an
exciting voyage, during which they had been
obliged to throw overboard their very clothes,
they passed over the high ground midway
between Cape Gris Nez and Calais. They
descended in the Forest of Guines. The freedom
of Calais was bestowed upon Blanchard, and a
monument erected to mark the spot where the
pair alighted.

It was in an attempt to emulate this exploit
that a few months later Pilatre de Rozier and
his friend Romaine lost their lives.

The maximum of speed had not yet been
attained and Lunardi, on 5th October 1785,
was to surpass his own record and all of his
contemporaries. Rising, at 3.45 P.M., from
Heriot's Gardens, Edinburgh, he says: "The
city of Glasgow I could plainly distinguish, also
the town of Paisley, and both shores of the
Forth ; but my attention was now diverted by

NINETY MILES AN HOUR. 179

finding myself immediately over the Firth of
Forth, at an altitude of 2000 feet. .... At 4.20
I descended at Ceres, after a voyage of forty-six
miles, thirty-six being over water, and was con-
veyed in triumph to the town of Cupar." Thus
Lunardi had accomplished forty-six miles in
thirty-five minutes, which is a speed almost
equalling the fastest that has ever been done on
a railway. A longer journey was subsequently
done by Lunardi, leaving Glasgow at 1.55 P.M.,
and in precisely two hours arriving at Alemoor,
Selkirkshire, 110 miles, including a halt of some
minutes in the hills.

A voyage notable for its remarkable rapidity
was executed by Garnerin, June 28, 1802, in
company with Captain Snowdon, E.N. They
departed from Chelsea Gardens and came down
near Colchester, sixty miles in forty-five minutes.
On the 5th July, Garnerin ascended from Mary-
lebone and descended at Chingford, seventeen
miles, in fifteen minutes, and attained also during
this interval a height of 7800 feet.

But a more notable voyage was to be made by
the French aeronaut Garnerin, in the balloon
commemorating the coronation of Napoleon I.
At 11 P.M. on the 16th December 1804, Garnerin
allowed his colossal machine to rise from the
square in front of Notre Dame, Paris. Twenty
hours later it had passed through France and
Italy, over St Peter's at Home and the Vatican
to descend into Lake Bracciano. It had traversed
a distance of 800 miles. The coronation balloon
was subsequently suspended in a corridor of the
Vatican, where it remained until 1814,

180 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

No further notable aerial voyages are recorded
until October 7th, 1811, when Sadler and Burcham
left Birmingham at 2.20 P.M. and by 4 P.M. had
made a flight of 1 12 miles. They finally alighted
near Boston, via Leicester, Market Deeping and
Peterborough.

Sadler was the first to attempt to cross the
Irish Channel, ascending from the lawn of Bel-
vedere House, Dublin, 1st October 1812, and
receiving his flag from the Duke of Richmond.
But he found himself precipitated into the sea
en route, the feat not being accomplished until
1817, when the same aeronaut's son, Windham
Sadler, travelled from Portobello Barracks,
Dublin, at 1.20 P.M. on June 22, and at 6.45
alighted a mile south of Holyhead.

Soon after this the famous Charles Green
begins his long series of intrepid aerial journeys,
many of which were remarkable for distance and
speed. One of these was undertaken in a storm,
from Newbury, Berkshire, to Crawley, Surrey,
fifty-eight miles, in an hour and a half, which
was rapid time for 1827, considering that the
one railway then in England could only boast
of twenty miles an hour. But by far the greater
portion of Green's fame must rest upon his
voyage from London to Weilburg in the great
Nassau balloon. This took place in 1836, the
start being from the Vauxhall Gardens at
1.30 P.M., November 17th. At twelve minutes
to three the Medway was crossed, and Canter-
bury at five minutes past four. A curious cir-
cumstance is that the aerostat passed several
coaches en route, going at the fastest rate possible,

LONDON TO HANOVER. 181

and was cheered by their occupants. The railway
was not then opened, and the fast time to Canter-
bury by coach was five and a half hours. At
4.48, Green (who was accompanied by Monck
Mason) gained the Channel, and at ten
minutes to six o'clock had effected a crossing
in safety, two miles from Calais. As the
night progressed they were, of course, totally
without landmarks and so could not judge of
their speed. "In this manner," writes Mason,
" did we traverse with rapid strides a large and
interesting portion of the European continent,
embracing within our horizon an immense sac-
cession of towns and villages, whereof those
which occurred during the earlier part of the
night, the presence of their artificial lights alone
enabled us to distinguish."

It was at 7.30 on the following morning
that the descent took place, so that the duration
of the voyage was exactly eighteen hours. " The
first question, ' Where are we 1 ' was speedily
answered, 'In the Duchy of Nassau, about two
leagues from the town of Weilburg.' The second
was theirs, * Where do you come from ? ' * From
London, which we left yesterday afternoon.' The
astonishment of the inhabitants at this declaration
may be imagined."

To reach Weilburg from the British capital in the
year 183 6 by the fastest coaches and steamer would
have taken three days. Green and Mason had
done it by balloon a distance of over 500 miles
in eighteen hours. A considerable portion of
five kingdoms, England, France, Belgium, Prussia
and the Duchy of Nassau ; a long succession of

182 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

cities, including London, Rochester, Canterbury,
Dover, Calais, Cassel, Ypres, Courtray, Lille,
Oudenarde, Tournay, Brussels, with Waterloo
and Jemappes, Namur, Liege, Spa and Coblentz
were all brought within the compass of their
horizon. When one reflects on the smoothness
of the travelling, its quiet and absence of dis-
tracting apparatus, we may safely regard this
long journey as an ideal transit and among the
most remarkable for speed which ever took place
prior to the establishment of railways.

In June 1841, Wise, an American aeronaut,
set out from Danville, Pa., at 2.35 P.M., and
arrived at Morgantown, seventy miles distant,
at 4.25, having in reality travelled a tor-
tuous course at the rate of fifty-five miles an
hour. In the same year Green travelled twenty
miles in twenty minutes from Chelsea to Bain-
ham, Essex. A few years later Coxwell travelled
through the air from Berlin to Dantzic, 270 miles,
in three hours and ten minutes.

A remarkable instance of speed in aerial transit
was afforded in 1849 by M. Arban, who crossed
the Alps from Marseilles to Turin, a distance of
400 miles in eight hours. This record between
the two cities has never been broken. The
speed, however, was equalled in Coxwell's journey
in 1857 from North Woolwich to Tavistock,
Devon, 250 miles, in five hours. " It was some
time before the particulars of the journey ob-
tained credence. At Sidmouth the alarm-bell
was rung by the night watchman ; but before
the inhabitants were astir the balloon was out
of sight and the man laughed at, until the

NADAR'S "GEANT." 183

Devonshire papers were published with an account
of the voyage." The aeronauts walked into the
town of Tavistock, and put up at the Queen's
Hotel, where they had difficulty in persuading
the worthy host that they had been in London
the night before. A shorter journey from Win-
chester to Harrow, seventy-six miles, was in
1862 accomplished in sixty-six minutes by Colonel
M'Donald and six officers of the Rifle Dep6t
Battalion, accompanied by Coxwell. For most
of the voyage the velocity was not less than
seventy miles an hour.

We now come to one of the most celebrated of
modern balloon voyages, that of Nadar's " Geant "
in 1863 from Paris to Nienburg, Hanover. This
famous journey was preceded by a brief one on
the 4th October, in which no fewer than fifteen
persons were carried in the monster car. The
balloon held 6098 metres of gas enclosed in
20,000 metres of silk, and was the largest ever
constructed. It descended on this occasion two
leagues from Neaux, and a fortnight later, with
nine passengers, reascended at 5 P.M. from the
Champ de Mars. At half-past eight it was over
Compiegne, seventy - eight miles from Paris.
Nothing more was heard of the balloon until a
second telegram was received in Paris stating
that Nadar's giant balloon passed over Erquelines,
on the Belgian frontier, at midnight on Sunday.
The airship was moving not far from the ground,
and the customs officer called out to know if
there was anything on which duty should be
paid ! No attention was paid to the question,
and the balloon kept on its way towards the

184 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

German frontier. At midnight the travellers
were over Holland, and later crossed the Zuyder
Zee. At 7.15 they were journeying through
Westphalia, crossing the river Ems, and at length
returning to Hanover, a little above Osnaburgh.
The balloon was on its way towards Hamburg
and the Baltic when it was thought wise to effect
a descent.

The descent was of a most exciting and
desperate character, for the wind was blowing at
a high rate, and the balloon was moving through
the air at sixty miles an hour. The car grazed
the earth and began dragging over walls, fences,
houses, stones and ponds. One of the passengers,
Jules Godard, then tried to accomplish an act
of sublime heroism. He clambered up into the
netting, and although three times falling, reached
the cord of the valve, opened it, and the gas
having a way of escape the monster ceased to
rise, but it still shot along in a horizontal line
with prodigious rapidity. One after another the
passengers jumped, not without injury, from the
car, and soon found that they had arrived in the
vicinity of Eethern in Hanover. In seventeen
hours they had travelled 250 leagues, while for a
single hour they had sustained a speed of at least
ninety miles.

The siege of Paris offered to the professors of
aerial navigation a signal opportunity to apply
their system.

At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in
July 1870 there were in Paris many experienced
aeronauts, including Tissandier, de Touvielle,
Nadar, Jules Durouf (about whom we shall speak

AERIAL EXODUS. 185

later) and Eugene Godard who had made no
fewer than 800 ascents. The subject of military
ballooning was naturally raised, and received a
lukewarm support from the Imperial Govern-
ment, which was far too disturbed seriously to
consider any scientific matter, even the true
science of the commissariat in war-time. Before
anything could be arranged, there came the
disaster of Sedan, which was followed in a few
days by the close investment of Paris. The new
Government at once addressed themselves to the
aeronauts, with a view to opening up aerial
communication with the exterior country. Six
balloons were overhauled, all in indifferent con-
dition, the worst being the one Napoleon III. had
intended for Solferino, but which had arrived
on the scene of the battle a day too late. M.
Tissandier tells us that nobody seems to have
known how to repair this balloon, known as
L'ImpSridL However they were all got together,
the besieged Parisians hailing the prospect with
the joy of children. Here at last was a note-
worthy chance of putting into execution the very
idea for which Montgolfier, the inventor of the
balloon, had really intended his invention.

The first ascent of the siege was made by M.
Durouf on September 21st. He carried a large
number of despatches, and after a three hours'
journey landed safely near Evreux. He was
followed on the 23rd by M. Mangin ; on the 29th
by Godard, jun., and on the 30th by Gaston
Tissandier, who has given us a spirited account
of his voyage.

The success of these aeronauts in escaping

186 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

from the capital and the hands of the Prussians
encouraged the Government to establish a balloon
post on a regular system. Immediate steps were
taken for the manufacture of a large number of
balloons, under specific conditions, as rapidly as
possible. Making the vessels proved, however,
an easier task than finding captains for them.
Experienced aeronauts were few, and it must be
remembered that when once they left Paris there
was no returning. That was the radical fault of
balloons ; one could not elect the place of one's
descent. In this emergency it was decided to
invite the assistance of such sailors as there were
in the capital, as belonging to a class whose
training had rendered them familiar with opera-
tions and dangers not dissimilar from ballooning.
The appeal met with a satisfactory response ;
many excellent mariners offered their services;
they were given all possible instructions, and a
large number of successful ascents were carried
out by these brave French tars. The remark of
one of them deserves to be memorable. " Our
topsail is high, sir, and difficult to reef; but we
can sail, all the same, and, please God, we'll
arrive in port."

The plan of employing acrobats from the
Hippodrome was attended with less success.
In several instances we are told they directed
their skill, when in a tight place, to slip down
the guide rope to earth, leaving the passengers
and despatches to look after themselves. But
on the whole the balloon service was distinguished
by singular ability and precision. From Septem-
ber to January sixty-four balloons were sent off,

SPEED OF BALLOONS. 187

and of these fifty-seven fulfilled their mission,
and the despatches reached their destination.
The total number of persons who left Paris was
155, the weight of the despatches was nine tons,
and the number of letters 3,000,000. As for the
speed of transit, it varied from twenty to fifty
miles an hour, and in one instance as high as
eighty miles.

Gambetta left by the Armand Barles (every
balloon had of course a name) on the 7th October.
When at too low an altitude he was immediately
fired on by the Prussians and narrowly escaped
being hit by a bullet.

On the 27th October the Bretagne fell, owing
to bad management, into the hands of the enemy
near Yerdun ; on the 4th November the Galilee
had a similar fate near Chartres ; and on the
12th the Daguerre was shot at, brought down
and seized a few leagues from Paris. The loss
of three balloons within a little more than a fort-
night alarmed the Government. It was obvious
that the vigilance of the enemy had been aroused,
and whenever a balloon was seen advices were
telegraphed along its probable line of flight, and
the swiftest Uhlans were put on the alert in the
hope of capturing it. The danger had vastly
increased, since a new rifled gun of enormous
range had been made by Krupp for the purpose
of firing shells at the aerial transports. One of
these was about this time set up at Versailles.
For these reasons the Government resolved that
in future balloon departures should take place at
night. At the same time the darkness added
greatly to the difficulties of the voyage, and

188 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

several of these nocturnal ascents were attended
with singular adventures.

About midnight, on the 24th November, the
Ville d'OrUans rose from Paris with an aeronaut
and one passenger. The wind blew from the
north and it was hoped the balloon would descend
near Tours. But in a short time the voyagers
heard a sound below them which caused them
both deep apprehension; it was the lashing of
breakers on the shore. At the time of this dis-
covery they were in a thick mist; when at
daybreak this cleared they found themselves
suspended over the sea, out of sight of land.
Several vessels were perceived and to these they
tried to signal, but were not answered. One
vessel, indeed, responded; but it was by firing
at them. Scudding now rapidly to the north
they were giving themselves up for lost when
they came in sight of land to the eastward.
Before they could gain it they descended rapidly
from loss of gas : their ballast being gone they
were obliged in despair to throw out a bag of
despatches. This expedient saved them ; the
balloon rose, encountering a westerly current
which carried them to shore. What part of the
world they were in at their descent they had no
notion ; the ground was covered with snow, they
saw no inhabitants, and being overcome with
fatigue and hunger, both fainted on getting out
of the car. On recovering they walked through
the snow with great exertion, and after a painful
journey of several hours passed the night in a
shed. In the morning a couple of woodmen
informed them, by means of signs and a box of

LONG DISTANCE JOURNEYS. 189

matches marked Christiania, that they were in
Norway. Their speed was over fifty miles an
hour for a number of hours.

A week later, on the 30th of November, two
fateful ascents from beleaguered Paris were made.
The Jacquard rose at 11 P.M. in charge of a sailor
named Prince, whose new found aeronautic zeal
was so great that as the ropes parted he cried
out : " Je veux faire un immense voyage ; on
parlera de mon ascension." He was not, alas, to
be baulked of his ambition. Driven by a south-
easterly wind he passed over the English Channel
where he was seen by some English vessels.
While over the vicinity of the Lizard he dropped
his despatches, some of which were afterwards
picked up on the rocks. Thus lightened the
balloon rose to a great height, disappeared over
the Atlantic billows and was never heard of
again.

The second balloon, the Jules Favre, started at
half -past eleven with two passengers. Only by a
miracle did it escape the fate of the Jacquard.
The wind blew from the north, and the aeronauts
fancied they were on their way to Lyons. Long
enveloped in fog, they emerged at daybreak and
saw beneath them an island which they supposed
to be in a river. They were grossly deceived;
it was Hoedic, in the Atlantic ! They were driv-
ing furiously out to sea; but in front of them
lay, as a forlorn hope, the larger island of Belle-
Isle. It was seen that they would have to pass
one end of it where it was very narrow, and that
they must either land on this strip of land or be
lost. They tore the valve open with frantic

190 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

energy, caused the balloon to descend some
1000 feet in a few minutes, and luckily succeeded
in striking the land. Albeit the shock was
terrific ; three times did the balloon bound into
the air, and at last caught against a wall, precipi-
tating the occupants of the car to the earth.
They were badly injured, but received great
attention from the people of the neighbourhood.
The father of General Trochu resided there, and
ordered them to be brought to his house.

On December 15th the Ville de Paris was so
unlucky as to fall at Wertzlar, in Prussia; and
four days later the General Chanzy was made
captive at Eothenburg, in Bavaria. On the
morning of 28th January, the Richard Wallace,
which rose from Paris the previous night, was
observed at La Eochelle approaching the sea and
almost touching the ground. The people shouted
to the aeronaut to descend, but instead of doing
so, he threw out a sack of ballast, rose to a great
height and soon disappeared in the western
horizon. Doubtless, the poor fellow had lost
his senses on seeing the danger which confronted
him. This almost completes the story of the
ballooning during the siege of Paris. It was the
last ascent but one ; that on the next day bore
intelligence to the Provinces of the conclusion of
an armistice.

These aerial voyages had solved the problem
of communication from Paris outwards. The
other problem of communication inwards from
the Provinces was hardly less important and
much more difficult. It required a particular
direction of current, and although M. Tissandier

PIGEON POST. 191

made several attempts he failed, and the return
of the balloons was abandoned as impossible.
Of the projects which were offered to the
Government to encompass the desired end, some
were among the wildest and most visionary that
ever entered the brain of man. One balloon
took out some trained dogs, which, it was hoped,
would find their way back again, but they never
reappeared.

The actual method by which the difficulty was
solved deserves, we think, a place in a work deal-
ing with modern locomotion. The return post
was effected by means of carrier pigeons, which,
having been taken out of Paris in balloons, were
let loose in the Provinces to find their way
home. There existed in Paris a " Societe
Colombophile," and after the departure of the
first balloon the leading spirits of this body
approached General Trochu, and proposed that
an attempt should be made to combine the out-
ward balloon post with a return service by
pigeons. The second balloon carried three birds,
which came safely back six hours later, with
news from the aeronauts. The return of eighteen
more despatched in following days confirmed the
practicability of the scheme. Thereupon, the
service was regularly organised and was carried
on with a fair amount of success throughout the
investment of the capital by the enemy. As the
despatches were required to be very small and
light, recourse was had to microscopic photo-
graphy. By this means sixteen folio pages of
print (32,000 words) were reduced to a pellicule
two inches long, one and a quarter inches wide.

192 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

and weighing about three-quarters of a grain !
The messages were destined for residents of
Paris, and came from all over France. Here are
a few samples :

DEPECHES X DISTRIBUER AUX DESTINATAIRES.

Pau, 26 Janvier. A. Tocher, Rue Chausee d'Antin.
Madeleine accouche heureusement hier. Bien beau
gallon.

Hiarrttz, 1 F&vrier. A. Martin, 68 Rue Petites Ecuries.
Sommes a Biarritz, bebe completement remis, embrasse
papa, doloureusement impassioiie's evenements.

A. Tant. Besoin d'argent, demande Masquier.

A. Perier. Tout parfaitement bien ; trouverons charbon
dans cave.

Each pigeon carried twenty of these tiny
gelatine leaves, carefully rolled up and placed
in a quill. They contained sufficient printed
matter to fill a large volume, and yet the weight
of the whole was only fifteen grains. When the
bird arrived at his cot in Paris, his precious little
bundle was taken to the Government office, the
quill was then cut open and the gelatine leaves
extracted. Placed in an enlarging optical
apparatus, similar to a magic lantern, the
messages were thrown on a screen, copied from
thence, and sent to their destination. The charge
was fifty centimes a word. The despatches
were not entrusted to one pigeon, but repeated
by others, in order to provide against acci-
dents, which were very common. The Prussians
were powerless against the winged messengers,
although an attempt was made to chase them
with birds of prey : but dense fogs arid severe
cold played havoc with the birds. There were

FAST HOMING PIGEONS. 193

sent out of Paris 363 pigeons, of which only
fifty-seven returned, some having been absent a
long time.

Such is a brief narration of this aerial post.
It was, beyond question, a marked success.
Although it could not save France or her capital,
yet it was an immense boon to the besieged, for
it established, during the whole of the siege,
that communication with the exterior which
would otherwise have been impossible. Had the
cause of the French been less desperate, the
strategic advantage this correspondence would
have imparted might have even turned the scale
against the enemy.

This suggests to us a reference to the speed
attained by pigeons as agents of rapid transit.

The idea that fast homing pigeons cover a mile
a minute for a considerable distance must, like
the tradition that Eclipse once accomplished that
feat, be finally abandoned. In no part of Great
Britain are the breeding and training of these
birds brought to greater perfection than at
Sheffield, and if its champions cannot travel at
the pace of express trains or approaching such
speed, it is not probable that other localities are
better supplied. In a competition early in 1902
from Banbury to Sheffield, a distance of ninety-
two miles, nearly 300 birds were flown with a
strong wind behind them. All other circum-
stances being propitious, and the birds being
selected for speed from a very much larger
number, it was anticipated that the winner's
time would be exceptionally fast. "Whether that
was the case is not recorded, but the official

194 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

timing gave the leading bird an average velocity
of only about two-thirds of a mile per minute,
with several others in pretty close attendance.
Some time was lost, no doubt, after the start
before the direct line for home was hit on, and
also at the finish before alighting. But even
when full allowance is made for these delays, it
does not go far to make up the difference between
1161 yards and 1760 yards a minute. Still,
since very few of the birds liberated at Banbury
failed to arrive at their destinations, the pigeon-
post presents the additional advantage of a large
degree of security. We have seen that when
several of these birds were entrusted in war time
with the same message, some were sure to reach
their destination, even if the enemy were ever
so vigilant.

On the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian war,
M. Dupuy de Lome, naval architect to the French
Government, produced an elongated balloon 120
feet in length and fifty feet in diameter, con-
taining 120,000 cubic feet of hydrogen.

An elongated balloon had been produced as
far back as 1784 by a French officer, General
Meusnier, who surrounded his gas envelope with
an outer envelope, the space between being
filled with compressed air. By altering the
pressure in the outer envelope he was able to
control the lifting power of his balloon. The
principle has been adopted in the air balloonets,
which are fitted to most modern airships. The
method of propulsion was by a number of oars
operated by hand. In 1852 Henri Giffard made
the first attempt at a power driver aerostat or air-

ADVENT OF THE PETROL MOTOR. 195

ship. The propeller was driven by a three horse-
power steam engine. Dupuy de Lome reverted
to the use of man power, employing a screw
propeller made of sails driven by eight men.
With it the inventor made a journey of some
ninety miles, but without being able to control
the direction.

In the same year (1872) Haanlein took an im-
portant step in the right direction by construct-
ing an airship in which the power was obtained
from a gas engine, but even this was too clumsy
and heavy to prove a practical success.

Other similarly shaped airships followed, until
in 1884 MM. Krebs and Kenard of the French
army accomplished for the first time a circular
voyage, returning ' from the point of departure
after a considerable aerial flight. Following the
example of Tissandier in the previous year, their
propeller was driven by an electric motor and,
under favourable atmospheric conditions and
using a car of extreme lightness, they attained
a speed of some six miles per hour.

Many of these early attempts might have been
comparatively successful had there been some
suitable engine available for their propulsion.

It was not until the advent of the motor car
had resulted in the construction of the light and
powerful petrol motor that a dirigible balloon
became a practical possibility. The first attempt
to use a petrol motor in an airship was made by
Wolfert in 1897, but unfortunately his petrol
caught fire when in the air, the ship was blown
up and Wolfert and his assistant killed. A
similar attempt was made by Schwartz during

196

THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

the same year, bub his vessel was wrecked by
wind. A. year or so later Santos-Dumont, a
young Brazilian, began his experiments in France,
which resulted, in 1902, in his winning the

TH B TRIUMPH OF SANTOS-DUMONT. HOW HB ROUNDED TUB EIFFEL TOWER.

Deutsch prize of 100,000 francs by the circum-
navigation of the Eiffel Tower. This result was
obtained by the use of the latest pattern of four-
cylinder water-cooled petrol motor of twelve horse-
power.

198 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

But Santos-Dumont was not the only experi-
menter in the field, for about 1899 Count
Zeppelin had produced in Germany the first
of the series of airships which have since made
him world-famous. He adopted the "rigid"
type of airship first produced by Schwartz in
1893, the gas envelope being surrounded by an
outer casing of aluminium, thus protecting the
gas-bag from too sudden temperature variations,
and greatly strengthening the whole construc-
tion. The gas-bag also was constructed in a sort
of bulkhead system, being formed of seventeen
different compartments. Many other improve-
ments were introduced, such as the duplication
of engines and propellers and the employment
of elevating planes and a sliding balance weight.
Although a speed of some sixteen miles per hour
was soon attained, Zeppelin at first had many
failures and received but little encouragement.
He persisted, nevertheless, with praiseworthy
determination, ultimately receiving assistance
from the German Government and public. He
is now able to construct airships carrying forty
persons for short journeys, or half that number
for long distances. There is much mystery as to
the capabilities of these enormous air-craft. They
are said to have attained speeds of fifty or sixty
miles an hour, and to have accomplished, without
a descent, journeys of over 800 miles in about
thirty hours.

After 1900 a number of airships of different
types began to be constructed, some of them
quickly resulting in fatal accidents. The pro-
duction of the Lebaudy airship, which was

200 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

gradually improved after several disasters, has
been said to mark "the beginning of practical
aerial navigation." This vessel, which was pur-
chased by the French Government in 1904
as a model for a French air-fleet, was of a
semi-rigid construction, the gas envelope being
attached to a keel of metallic tubing. Numerous
other airships, mostly of the non-rigid type, in
which the car and engines are suspended directly
from the balloon itself, have been produced in
France. Particularly must be mentioned the
huge Clement-Bayard, which on 16th October
1910, under favourable conditions, travelled
with seven persons on board from Paris to
London, covering the 246 miles at an average
of forty-one miles per hour. This huge vessel
is 250 feet in length, and carries petrol engines
of 250 horse-power. It has since been purchased
by the British War Office.

A number of airships have been constructed in
Great Britain during recent years both by the
Government and by private enterprise, chiefly
with a view to their use for military purposes ;
but it must be admitted that in common with
every other nation, except perhaps France, we
are far behind Germany in our development of
this form of locomotion.

The subject of dirigible balloons must not
be dismissed without a reference to the most
ambitious experiment ever attempted in this
type of vessel the attempt made by Mr
Wellman on 15th October 1910 to cross the
Atlantic. This daring aeronaut, who had previ-
ously attempted to reach the North Pole by

"HEAVIER THAN AIR" MACHINES. 201

air, designed a special airship fitted with a
lifeboat, searchlights and wireless telegraphy
apparatus; but its special feature was a device
which he termed the equilibrator, consisting of
a trail of thirty floating steel cylinders connected
by steel cables. The end of the equilibrator
floated on the sea behind the vessel. If from
any cause, such as an increase of temperature,
the airship began to rise above its normal height,
one or more of these cylinders were naturally
lifted from the water, and the additional weight
tended to keep the vessel always at the same
level. But the equilibrator proved its undoing.
At first all was successful. Soon, however, the
wind began to increase, and in spite of the
160 horse-power engine the ship was blown out
of her course. As the waves became rougher
the equilibrator was thrown violently about, and
its jerky motion threatened to wreck the whole
vessel. After the ship had been in the air for
sixty-nine hours and had travelled 1000 miles,
wireless communication was fortunately estab-
lished with a passing steamer, with the result
that the airship crew were rescued from their
lifeboat and their novel craft abandoned.

The most remarkable feature of aerial loco-
motion has been the marvellous rapidity with
which "heavier than air" flying machines (as
distinct from dirigible balloons) have suddenly
been developed and brought into practical use.
Experiments with heavier than air machines
were made long before balloons were thought of.
The first authentic record dates from the year
67 A.D. In 1060 Ollivier, a monk of Malmesbury,

202 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

constructed a pair of artificial wings and, with
more courage than forethought, jumped from the
tower and was seriously injured. At the be-
ginning of the sixteenth century Leonardo da
Vinci, the famous painter, published at Florence
a celebrated treatise on flight which displays a
remarkable knowledge of the subject. He de-
signed a machine of the helicopter type that
is to say, one with horizontal propellers. Many
attempts have since been made with this type of
apparatus, but all have been unsuccessful.

It was not until 1809 that Sir George Cayiey
introduced all the modern theories of flight and
prepared the way for all the wonderful successes
of recent years by the construction of his
"glider" that is to say, an aeroplane without
any propelling power. His invention made
many successful flights, but without a passenger.
In 1842 John Stringfellow and W. S. Henson
designed a practical model aeroplane on Cayley's
system.

In 1856 Le Bris, a French sailor, was injured
when experimenting with a glider which was
drawn, kite fashion, against the wind by a team
of horses.

The next event which had an important bear-
ing on the problem of mechanical flight was the
invention of the box-kite by Laurence Hargrave,
a native of New South Wales. Experiments
with box-kites have supplied much useful in-
formation, and have had a marked influence on
aeroplane design. Otto Lilienthal, a German
engineer, in 1889 began a series of valuable
gliding experiments, which he continued until he

POWER-DRIVEN FLIGHT. 203

was killed eighteen years later. (He will always
be remembered by the famous book "Bird
Flight," which he published with the co-opera-
tion of his brother.)

The last difficulty in the way of successful
flight, the absence of a suitable propelling
apparatus, was by this time being overcome by
the rapid development of the petrol motor,
the power producer which has made, and is still
making, such a wonderful difference in all our
modern methods of locomotion.

On 9th October 1908 Clement Ader made in
France the first short and successful power-
driven flight. Two years later the brothers
Wilbur and Orville Wright, who had made
many gliding experiments in America, fol-
lowed their example, using a petrol motor.
By 1905 their machine had so far progressed
that Wilbur Wright was enabled to make a
flight of eighteen minutes' duration. Three
years later his brother remained in the air
for two hours twenty minutes twenty-three
seconds, during which time he covered 77J
miles.

Meanwhile many other experimenters were at
work, and the result of their efforts rendered
future progress rapid. Kesearches into the diffi-
cult question of air resistance, the science of
aerodynamics, were carried on for many years
by Prof. Langley in America, M. Eiffel in France,
and Prof. Dines and Sir Hiram Maxim in
England, and progress was thereby much facili-
tated. From the time of the first public flight
made by Santos-Dumont in 1906 the science

204: THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

of aviation has bounded forward at an annu-
ally increasing pace. In 1908 H. Farman made
the first circular aeroplane flight, and a few
months later carried a passenger for the first
time.

On 25th July 1909 M. L. Bleriot flew across
the English Channel, thereby winning a prize of
1000, and in the same year Farman proved
the practicability of the new method of loco-
motion by carrying two passengers a distance
of about 6 miles. On 28th April 1910 Louis
Paulhan won the Daily Mail prize of 10,000 by
flying from London to Manchester with only
one stop, the time taken being four hours two
minutes, the distance about 150 miles. On
2nd June the Hon. C. S. Rolls flew from Dover
to Calais and back without a stop. In 1911 the
Daily Mail offered a second 10,000 prize for a
flight of 1010 miles round Britain. Nineteen
competitors started from Brooklands on 22nd
September, and Lieut. Conneau, of the French
Army, flying under the name of Beaumont,
was the first to finish, reaching Brooklands on
the 26th September. The time occupied in
his flight was twenty-two hours twenty-eight
minutes nineteen seconds. He was followed by
J. Vedrines on a Morane monoplane, whose time
was twenty-three hours thirty-seven minutes
fifty-four seconds.

On 1st September 1911 a French aviator,
M. Fourny, created a record by flying 722 kilo-
metres 933 metres without a halt, the time
taken being eleven hours one minute twenty-nine
and a fifth seconds, and three days later another

AEROPLANES. 205

Frenchman, M. Garros, attained the remarkable
altitude of 13,950 feet at St Malo. In the same
month aeroplanes were first utilised for the
carriage of mails, a special aeroplane service being
established for a week between London and Wind-
sor. 100,000 letters and post-cards were carried
at a charge of Is. Id. each for letters and 6|d. for
post-cards, the profits being devoted to charity.

The only form of flying machine which has
so far proved successful is the aeroplane. The
helicopter, with its horizontal rotating propellers,
has, as yet, never approached practical flight,
and the ornithopter, with flapping wings in
imitation of bird flight, although theoretically
more efficient than the aeroplane, has always
been a complete failure, probably on account of
the difficulty and intricacy of the power trans-
mitting mechanism required.

The manner in which an aeroplane is sustained
in the air is exactly similar in principle to the
flight of a kite. The simplest form of kite
consists of a flat surface, or plane, drawn by
means of a string through the air and inclined
at an angle to the horizontal. The result of this
inclination is that the resistance of the air, being
directed against the lower side of the plane,
tends not only to stop its forward motion, but
also to raise it. In the aeroplane the pull of the
string is replaced by the thrust exerted by a
rapidly revolving propeller. Various devices,
such as using slightly curved instead of flat
planes, are employed to diminish, as far as
possible, the resistance to forward motion and
to increase the lifting action.

MODERN AEROPLANES. 207

It is obvious that the greater the surface of
the plane, the greater will be the resistance and,
therefore, the consequent lifting power. Con-
structional difficulties make it impossible to
increase the area of a single plane indefinitely,
and F. H. Wenhan therefore proposed, as far
back as 1866, the use of two or more surfaces,
one above the other. As a result of this
proposal, biplanes, triplanes and multiplanes
have been used. Particularly may be mentioned
the experiments made with multiplanes by Sir
Hiram Maxim in 1894.

Modern machines are almost exclusively of
either the monoplane or biplane types, the
chief advantage of the biplane being the
greatest strength of its structure. Against
this must be set its additional weight and the
extra head resistance encountered, which make
it decidedly slower than the monoplane. M.
Nieuport, on a monoplane of his own construc-
tion, has flown a distance of ten kilometres at an
average speed of over 82J miles per hour. The
average speed of a monoplane may be said to be
about fifty miles, and that of a biplane about
forty miles per hour.

What the future of the aeroplane may be is
impossible to conjecture. There have, of course,
been numerous accidents, and they, unfortun-
ately, continue, though at a diminishing rate.
When, however, the increasing numbers of
aviators and the distances they cover are taken
into consideration, the proportion of serious
accidents is found to be decidedly small. Acci-
dents, too, have been due, at any rate of

MODERN AEROPLANES. 209

late years, not to serious defects, but to minor
constructional or manipulative imperfections
which can only be overcome by time arid ex-
perience. The most likely cause of trouble is
failure of the motor, which stops the forward
motion and therefore removes the lifting power.
Unless this occurs when the machine is near the
ground, the consequences are not necessarily
likely to be serious as the descent is gradual and
the pilot has time to choose a suitable landing-
place. Nevertheless, modern designers are con-
stantly aiming at the duplication of the pro-
pelling apparatus as an additional precaution.

Other modern tendencies are the reduction of
engine power. At present fifty and even 100
horse-power engines are frequently employed,
but there is little doubt that this will be con-
siderably reduced in the near future except for
special purposes. There are some who think
that the future success of aeroplanes depends
upon the attainment of automatic stability. At
present the pilot, in addition to controlling the
direction of flight by means of a vertical rudder,
has to preserve his balance by controlling levers
which "warp" the edge of the main planes of
the machine. It is suggested that much greater
safety would be enjoyed could this balancing be
produced automatically by means of a gyroscope,
or by any other method, such as by specially
shaped planes which will always maintain their
stability. There are many experienced aviators,
however, who regard automatic stability as by
no means desirable, and even objectionable, and
no more likely to displace the unstable form

210 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION,

than the automatically stable form of cycle, the
tricycle, is likely to displace the unstable but
much more convenient bicycle.

Theoretically there is no reason why aerial
locomotion should not be successful with engines
of but a few horse-power, or even without an
engine at all. At present, however, there is
little hope of the man-power machine ever re-
sulting in practical flight, in spite of the efforts
of hundreds of inventors. The most successful
attempt was made by a Frenchman, M. Rettich,
in October 1912, who, by means of a combina-
tion of tricycle and aeroplane, travelled a
distance of just under ten feet at a height of
four inches from the ground.

Another type of aeroplane a sort of aerial
boat which is being rapidly developed, is the
form known, for want of a better name, as a
hydroplane. The usual landing skids are re-
placed by buoyant chambers, which enable the
vessel to float on water. These vessels are able
to travel along the surface of the sea, rise for
a flight and return to the sea again, and their
importance in naval matters cannot be over-
estimated.

One great problem which the aeroplane de-
signer has to face is the difficulty of constructing
his machine in such a manner as successfully to
withstand the strain imposed on the structure
when alighting. In the case of the hydroplane
(water-aeroplane is, perhaps, a better name) this
difficulty more or less completely vanishes, for
water naturally provides a far smoother surface
on which to alight than the smoothest earth.

CITY TRAFFIC. 211

As a result, it has been found much easier to
design hydroplanes to carry a number of pas-
sengers. One of the greatest difficulties is to
construct machines capable of withstanding heavy
seas, and also to provide for a sufficient petrol
supply for the necessarily long journeys which
must be undertaken. However, those most com-
petent to judge are confident that not many
years will elapse before a hydroplane capable of
crossing the Atlantic will be constructed.

CHAPTER X.

EAPID transit between the business quarters of
great cities and their suburbs is entirely a modern
problem, and mostly a very recent one. The
brilliant achievements of street railway engineers
in the present generation have only kept pace
with urgent necessities. The growth of many
great cities in Great Britain and America has
been wonderful, and has been maintained at a
constant rate. Such a growth means increase in
the peopled area of each city, and thus the
distances to be traversed from the residential
suburbs to the business district are perpetually
increasing.

As it is in cities that the multiplicity of traffic
occasions the most inconvenience, it is also where
the need for the rapid transit of goods and
passengers is most marked,

Yet so effectually had public enterprise and
capital in Great Britain centred in the steam
locomotive and the railroads in connection there-

212

THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

with, that for thirty or forty years following
urban transportation was sadly neglected, and,
particularly in London, facilities for rapid move-
ment left much to seek. Prior to the construc-
tion of the Underground Railway, rapid transit

Tim FIRST OMNIBUS.

in London was represented by the omnibus, first
started July 1829, and the hackney coach or cab.
But in the interval the Americans had long
perceived the merits of the tramway system in
accelerating the movements of the urban popula-
tion. In New York, the Fourth Avenue (Harlem)
Tramway was chartered in 1831, and for twenty

TRAMWAYS. 213

years maintained a monopoly of the street rail-
way traffic, after which a general extension of
the system followed in the large cities. Phila-
delphia and Boston started tramways in 1857,
and from that period to the present, the growth
of tramways in America has been so widespread
that over 500 towns and cities are equipped with

PATENT SAFETY CAB.

this means of rapid locomotion. As we shall
see, although horse traction was in the first
instance resorted to, yet this was, in many
instances, succeeded by cable system, and latterly
by electricity.

In 1858-59 an enterprising American, G. F.
Train, obtained permission to establish several
short tramways in this country. But the rails
were of a most objectionable and inconvenient

2H THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

form, their projecting flanges making it difficult
and even dangerous for ordinary vehicles to
cross the line save at right angles to the line.
The result was that they were soon decreed a
nuisance by the several local authorities, and
those in London having been laid without
special Parliamentary sanction, their summary
removal was ordered.

But ten years later, an agitation having been
vigorously carried on meanwhile, and the metro-
politan toll-bar system abolished, tramways re-
appeared in force. Several companies were
incorporated for London in 1869-70, and in the
course of the next decade the larger provincial
towns had followed the example of the capital.
There are now well over 1000 miles of tramways
built and in operation in the United Kingdom,
carrying annually an enormous number of people.
In London alone the tramway passengers amount
to between 700 and 800 millions every year.

The growing development of tramways, which
made it possible for the industrial classes to avail
themselves for the first time of the advantages of
rapid locomotion, naturally led to still further
efforts on the part of the projectors to lessen the
cost of working, as well as to increase the speed.
Various patents had been taken out for cable
traction, i.e. in which a rope should travel
enclosed in an underground pipe, with a grip
attachment on the cars capable of clutching or
releasing the moving cable. The first practical
application of this plan was made in San Fran-
cisco in 1873 by the building of the Clay Street
cable line. The road, which is about a mile

No. 1, showing construction.

No. 2. Iron shields with a workman in each compartment.

THE THAMES TUNNEL.

216 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

long, has, in parts, a gradient of one in six, and
rises to a height of 300 feet above its low-level
terminus. Animal traction was, of course, im-
practicable over such a route, and the success
of the new cable system being ascertained, it
was applied to other lines, San Francisco alone
having 100 miles of cable lines in operation.
Ten years afterwards Chicago built its first cable
line, and it was also about the same time adopted
for the Brooklyn Bridge Kail way, which conveys
an average of 35,000 people in the single hour
between 5 and 6 P.M. daily. It was also applied
to the great Broadway line.

This country was somewhat tardy in using
cable traction, and, when adopted, was only on a
very limited scale, one great reason being the
relative narrowness and crookedness of the
streets. The Highgate Hill cable line was
opened in 1884, and other lines were soon built
in Edinburgh, Birmingham, Bristol and Matlock.
The Brixton tramway superseded horse-power by
a cable. Australia and New Zealand also largely
adopted the cable system.

But the greater advantages of electricity were
not long in becoming manifest, especially in the
United States. In New York, Boston, Chicago
and Philadelphia the electric trolley system has
grown almost universal, whereby speed has been
doubled, and the heart of the city made accessible
at slight cost to the dwellers in the suburbs.
After a considerable interval electric tramways
secured a footing in Great Britain, such towns as
Glasgow, Nottingham and Norwich preceding
the capital, which did not enjoy such a service

METROPOLITAN RAILWAY. 217

until 1901, when the Shepherd's Bush and Kew
to Southall lines were opened.

There can be no question, however, that no
matter how conservative London may have been
as regards speed in transit, the establishment of
some system partially effecting this for the mass
of the population would have previously taken
place but for the building of the underground
Metropolitan Railway. When the idea was
first proposed of a railway for human beings
to travel along under the streets and among
the sewers it was regarded with contemptuous
amusement. But London's stupendous growth
demanded new and improved means of com-
munication : the streets were already too con-
gested with traffic : the choice lay between a
railway over the top of the houses or beneath the
pavement, and the latter alternative was the
one chosen. Of course, the omnibus and cab
interests, unconsciously following the example of
their predecessors, the stage-coachmen, were
fiercely opposed to the scheme, but when power-
less to prevent it, wreaked their spleen in bitter
jests and sarcasm.

In 1854 the first Act of Parliament was passed
authorising the line, and the works commenced in
1860. Three years later the first section of the
line Paddington to Farringdon Street was
opened, in which year the Lords' Committee
recommended that the inner circle of the further
projected lines should abut upon, if not actually
join, most of the principal railway termini in
the metropolis. The total length of the inner
circle is 13 miles 176 yards, two miles of which

218 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

length being laid with four lines of rails, and the
total length of the two underground systems is
over forty miles. Even when the utmost pre-
cautions are taken, tunnelling through a town is
a risky operation. Settlements may occur years
after the completion of the works ; water mains
may be broken in the streets and in the houses ;
stone staircases may fall down ; and other un-
pleasant symptoms of instability may show
themselves. But rapid transit was the goal in
view; in the case of London, and, indeed, all
large cities, railways designed for local service
must of necessity be either sunk below or raised
above the street level ; and London public opinion
was against the elevated railway, which has had
such a great success in New York and Liverpool.
By means of the new " Underground " it became
possible, no matter how congested the street
traffic, to reach the Bank from Hammersmith, a
distance of seven miles, traversing or rather
following the line of most resistance in twenty
minutes. Here, then, we see a vast improve-
ment as regards economy of time. In 1800 a
walk (there was no other popular means of
transit) to the Bank from Hammersmith occu-
pied about two hours ; in 1850 the omnibus did
the journey in fifty minutes.

But New York was soon to be better served
than London. In 1 86 7, the first attempt was made
to improve existing means of transit between the
residential and the business quarters of the city
by the construction of an elevated railway
actuated by a wire rope and a stationary engine.
The undertaking passed into other hands in

220 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

1872, and by 1880 the elevated railway system
was worked over thirty-four and a half miles of
line; 165,000 passengers on an average were
carried per day, and trains ran every two
minutes during the morning and evening, with
a somewhat longer interval in the quieter hours
of the day. The railway is supported on square,
wrought-iron lattice-work columns let into cast-
iron base blocks, founded on brickwork and con-
crete, at a distance of from thirty-seven to forty-
four feet apart. In parts, where the street traffic
is crowded, a single row of columns is planted in
the line of each kerb, on the upper ends of which
a pair of longitudinal girders are fixed to carry a
line of way twenty-two and a half feet high
above street level, at each side of the street. In
other situations the two lines of way are sup-
ported at a height of twenty-one feet on longi-
tudinal girders in the middle of the street fixed
to transverse girders which span the street and
are carried on columns at the curbs. The
system certainly has its drawbacks, and does not
make for beauty or picturesqueness, but for a
time, even when the locomotives were worked
by steam, it made New York the most admirably
served city in the world in the matter of rapid
transit, it being possible to go from Harlem to
the Battery, nine miles, in twenty-one minutes.

Meanwhile, the world's greatest city had rested
content with the facilities afforded by its under-
ground railway and its horse-traction tramways
in spite of the daily increasing evidences that
these were inadequate to the needs of the huge
metropolis.

ELECTRIC RAILWAYS 221

The first step in that wonderful change which,
in a few years, entirely altered London's methods
of locomotion, was the construction, commenced
in 1886, of the City and South London Railway,
the first London electric railway. Its original
length was 3J miles, and it was constructed in
two tunnels running side by side at a distance
below the surface varying from forty to eighty
feet. The success of this venture was quickly fol-
lowed by the construction of the Central London
Railway, which originally set up a record in
cheap transit by conveying passengers from the
Mansion House to Shepherd's Bush for a charge
of twopence. Then came the conversion to
electric traction of the old Metropolitan and
District Railways, and the building of a number
of deep level tubular electric lines to all parts of
the metropolis. There are now many miles of
underground electric railways in London on
which a continuous service of trains is main-
tained, with intervals of only two or three
minutes, from about 5.30 a.m. till well after
midnight.

On the earlier lines separate electric loco-
motives were employed to draw the trains, but
now the motors are placed in the front of the
passenger coaches, this method giving rise to less
vibration. Driving such a train is simplicity
itself, the whole of the complicated electrical
connections required for starting, stopping and
speed regulating being controlled by a single
handle.

The marvellous changes in the methods of
transit under ground have been equalled by the

222 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

alterations on the surface. London's old horse
tramways were at last superseded by electrically
driven tramcars, and the old horse omnibuses
have given place to buses driven by motor-
power. These are constructed and controlled in
exactly the same manner as the modern motor
cars already described, only differing in that
they are designed to carry a large number of
passengers at a comparatively slow speed. Most
of the omnibuses at present in use in London
are driven by petrol motors, but some are steam
driven.

For many years London was far behind many
of even the lesser provincial towns in the matter
of tramways. Long after rapid and efficient
electric tramways had been in operation in all
the large, and many of the small, provincial towns,
the metropolis still clung to its old horse tram-
ways. However, these had at last to give way
to the ever-increasing demand for progress and
greater facilities, and large numbers of electric
cars now run daily in all but the most central
portions of London. For many years the
London County Council sought in vain for power
to bring its South London tramways over the
bridges and along the Embankment. At last all
opposition was overcome, and the Northern and
Southern systems were linked up. Another link
has been provided by the construction of a
shallow underground subway passing from the
foot of Waterloo Bridge under the Strand and
Kingsway, coming to the surface again in
Bloomsbury. Special low cars had to be con-
structed for this journey.

RIVAL SYSTEMS. 223

In some towns electric tramways are operated
by what is known as the overhead system,
electric power being taken from an overhead
wire. In other places the conduit system is
employed, the wire conveying the current being
placed in a slot in the road between the tram
rails. The latter system is far more expensive
to construct, but has the advantage of being much
less unsightly than the former.

Another objection to the overhead wire con-
struction is the obstruction caused by the posts
which are necessary to support the wire. In
London both methods are in use, the overhead
construction being employed in the outlying
districts, and the conduit system in the busier
streets.

Another system which has been adopted in
Paris and in some English towns is the surface
contact system. A series of metal studs are
placed, at intervals of about nine feet, between the
tram rails. By means of an electro-magnet on
the car each stud is automatically connected to
the electric cable beneath while the car is passing
over, the electric current being collected from
each stud in turn by a long metal shoe, similar
to that used in the conduit system. In each of
these methods the current returns through the
rails.

In order to compete with motor omnibuses, a
new type of rail-less tramcar is being experi-
mented with. Electric power is taken from an
overhead wire by means of a flexible arm, but
the car is free to travel on any portion of the
road. Traffic delays will thus be minimised,

224 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

and the cost of installation enormously reduced,
although, since there are no rails to act as a
return conductor for the electric current, a
second overhead wire is necessary. This system
has already been adopted in a number of con-
tinental cities and in one or two towns in the
North of England.

Electric traction has not at present been very
extensively adopted on above-ground railways.
There is little doubt that its economy in working,
and the rapidity with which full speed may be
attained, will ultimately lead to its adoption, at
any rate in suburban areas, where stations are
close together and stoppages therefore frequent.
The largest electrification scheme so far com-
pleted is that of the London, Brighton and South
Coast Railway Company, who have converted
some sixty -two miles of single track in their
suburban area to overhead electric traction with
happy financial results. They are said to be
contemplating the electrification of their main
line to Brighton. The London and North-
Western Railway Company have also commenced
the electrification of their suburban line ; the
London and South- We stern and other Companies
are likely to follow suit at no late date.

The chief reasons for delay are probably to be
found in the enormous expense incurred in such
a radical change, and also in the uncertainty
that still exists in the minds of engineers as to
which is the best system to adopt. For many
years the rivalry between the direct or con-
tinuous current system, such as is used on the
London underground railways, and the single-

THE MONO-RAIL. 225

Ehase alternating current system, adopted by the
ondon and Brighton Company, has continued
without any definite victory for either side.
There is another system in use on several con-
tinental lines on which what is known as a
three-phase alternating current is employed at a
high pressure. This system has been shown in
Germany to be capable of a speed of 125 miles
per hour, but it is more adapted to high-speed
main-line working than to short suburban rail-
ways. Although it is probable that the electrifica-
tion of main-line railways will ultimately come,
it will certainly not be for many years, and the
innovation will be gradual. There will be no
sudden change such as was at one time imagined.

A plan which is supposed to combine all the
advantages of electric traction on an ordinary
steam railway track is being tried by the Great
Central Railway. A comfortable coach, capable
of accommodating fifty passengers, is fitted
in its front compartment with a six cylinder
petrol motor, which drives a specially con-
structed electric generator. The current from
this generator drives electric motors, operating
directly on the axles of the car. The system is
said to be cheap and efficient, and a speed of
forty miles per hour can be attained on the level.
It seems probable that this system will ultimately
displace the small self-contained steam-driven
passenger coaches which have of late years
become so general on small branch lines.

A type of railway of which great things are
sometimes prophesied is the mono-rail, on which
the cars run on a single rail. One method is to
P

226 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

suspend the car from a single overhead rail, and
this has been successfully adopted on an electric
line of 8J miles which runs through the Wupper
Valley in Germany. Fifty passengers are carried
in each coach at a speed of over thirty miles per
hour. In Belgium experiments have been made
with cars which are built in duplicate and are
hung on each side of a supporting rail fixed a few
feet above the ground, the duplicate carriages
thus being made to straddle across the rail. The
first railway of the sort was constructed at Ches-
hunt, in Hert ford shire, as far back as 1825
for the conveyance of bricks. The advent of
electrical driving has drawn attention to its
adaptability for high speeds, and Mr Behr has
suggested that a railway of this type should be
constructed between London and Brighton, and
between Liverpool and Manchester, to run at
120 miles per hour. The distance of thirty-two
miles between the two Lancashire towns was to
be covered in fifteen minutes. A more recent
proposal is the construction of a Behr mono-rail
through Pelham Bay Park to City Island, New
York City.

The most original class of mono-railway is that
invented by Louis Brennan (inventor of the Bren-
nan torpedo) in England and by Eichard Scherl
in Germany. Brennan first exhibited his system
in 1907. The track consists of a single rail laid
on the ground. On it the car is balanced by
means of a gyroscope. This is a very simple
piece of apparatus, and consists merely of a heavy
fly-wheel rotating at a high speed. Its own
momentum tends to keep it continually rotating

NECESSITY OF SPEED. 227

in the same plane, thus maintaining the balance
of the car in which it is fixed. Mr Brennan ex-
hibited in December 1909 a successful car on this
principle, weighing twenty-two tons and carrying
forty passengers. It was driven by petrol motors,
and was balanced by two gyroscopes, each weigh-
ing fifteen hundredweights, and making fifty
revolutions per second. In order to minimise
friction, the gyroscopes were placed in a vacuum
chamber. Under these conditions they continue to
revolve for several hours after the engine has been
stopped, thus obviating any danger of accident
due to failure of the engine. It is thought that
a gyroscopic mono-railroad might be particularly
useful for pioneer work in rough country.

In London, and in many other important
cities, there is a growing need of a subway for
freight trains, so that heavy goods can be taken
from ships and ferries, and carried on belt-line
cars to warehouses and stores in different parts
of the city. By some such system much
delay and traffic congestion might be avoided
in many of the largest cities of the world.
A tunnel freight road would greatly promote
local prosperity as we 1 ! as the convenience of
shippers.

Eapid locomotion is a necessity of modern city
life ; in satisfying this necessity a multitude of
benefits accrue to the whole community. The
result of all this costly effort must influence the
future course of civilisation, and perfect in a
decided fashion the modern city which owes its
present congestion to the development of steam
rail-roads.

228 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

Ian Maclaren recently wrote of Americans :
" No man goes slow if he has the chance of
going fast ; no man stops to talk if he can talk
walking ; no man walks if he can ride in a
trolley-car ; no one goes in a trolley-car if he can
get in a convenient steam car ; and by and bye,
no one will go in a steam car if he can be shot
through a pneumatic tube. . . . There is nothing,"
he added, " an American cannot do, except
rest."

This reference to the pneumatic tube suggests
the high hopes which have from time to time
been entertained of this agent as a means of
rapid transit.

Early in the last century Medhurst made a
proposal to construct a railway on this principle,
the carriages moving through an air-tight tunnel.
A short pneumatic railway was laid down in
the Crystal Palace grounds in 1865 by Mr
Eammel. It consisted of a single line of rails in
a tunnel 600 yards in length, along which ran a
carriage. Motion to the latter was conveyed by
means of a fan or hollow disc twenty-two feet in
diameter, which either condensed or rarefied the
air as required, according to the adjustment of
certain valves. This experiment was, however,
soon discontinued, and the only way air is used
now in the propulsion of vehicles is in a com-
pressed state, and working a compressed air-
engine.

Like the pneumatic tube, the moving platform,
shown in operation at the Paris Exhibition of
1900, has not proved as adaptable to the require-
ments of rapid locomotion as was at one time

A NON-STOP RAILWAY.

229

anticipated, and has not been brought into use
commercially. A suggestion of a somewhat
similar nature was brought forward in 1911 for
a non-stop railway for use in busy districts. The
cars are to be operated by means of a spiral
screw-thread on a revolving horizontal shaft

MOVING PLATFORM, PARIS EXHIBITION, 1900.

which runs the whole length of the railway. In
the stations the pitch (or distance between the
turns of the spiral) would be small, thus moving
the car at a low rate of speed, not exceeding
three miles per hour. Between the stations the
successive turns of the spiral would be more
widely separated, thus carrying the train along
more quickly. It is claimed that this scheme is
very cheap in construction and working, and will
carry more passengers per hour than any other

230 THE STORY OF LOCOMOTION.

method yet adopted. It has not yet been given
a practical trial.

When one is asked, "What is the value of
rapid transit? what difference does it make
whether we reach Edinburgh in eight hours or
eighteen, or gain Cologne from London in
sixteen or thirty hours? the answer to both is
easy. Despatch is not only the soul of business,
but international understanding and good-will
largely depend upon facile intercommunication.
According to Professor Bryce, in enumerating the
causes of Anglo-American amity, "the ocean
steamers have done perhaps most of all, because
they have enabled the two peoples to know each
other." When it was a two days' journey from
London to Calais, a comprehension of France,
such as is enjoyed to-day by many thousands,
was impossible to Englishmen.

As to the far developments of Kapid Transit
only the poet and dreamer can tell us, he who has

"... dipt into the future far as human eye can see,
Saw the vision of the world and all the wonders that

would be ;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic

sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly

bales."

Some twelve or fifteen years ago the ingenious
author of "Anticipations" expressed his belief
that the motor hired or privately owned
would solve for first-class passengers the problem
of transit in the future. It would be capable of
a day's journey of 300 miles or more ; one would
change nothing unless it were the driver from

EFFECTS OF SPEED. 231

stage to stage, moving as one wished and resting
where one wished, combining all the attractive-
ness of old-fashioned posting, with quadruple and
quintuple speed. This forecast has been fulfilled
sooner, perhaps, than even its author imagined
possible.

" No one," wrote Mr Wells, " who has studied
the civil history of the nineteenth century will
deny how far-reaching the consequences of
changes in transit may be. ... Upon transport,
upon locomotion, may also hang the most
momentous issues of politics and war. The
growth of our great cities, the rapid peopling
of America, the entry of China into the field
of European politics are, for example, quite
obviously and directly consequences of new
methods of locomotion."

Therefore, we may say to the opponents of
this great branch of material progress to-day :

1 c Decry all speed and laud the leisur'd mole.
The world moves yet but fleeter to its goal."

FINIS.

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