First Practical Locomotive

Railroads annihilate distance and time.  Train clocked at 25 miles per hour.  Able to maintain speed for hours at a time.  Hundreds of miles in hours.  Big competition in Rainhill, England October 29, 1829.

This story by Samuel Smiles has the mood of the Space Race a century and a half later. Following closely upon the beginning of steam-navigation, the introduction of railways, with cars drawn by steam-locomotives, was the greatest triumph, up to that period, of mechanical invention.

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