El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1910-11-18

law proved to be twentyfold removed
from the truth
Many Flying Machine Patents.
Since then thousands of patents have
been issued for flying-machines and
their attachments. The rise of the
science of air navigation promises to
establish as great a field for invent
ors as the rise of the automobile two
decades ago. Motors, fixtures. speed
registers, wind guages, altitude re-
cCrders, and balancing appliances, are
only a few of the hundreds of things
which will be required from the brain
of the inventor. AS there has been no
more fruitful field of invention in the
past decade than supplying the wants
OF the automobilist, so all the signs
a the patent office indicate that the
flying machine business will have frss
call during the next decade.
One might trace the art of trans
portation back to the time when
mothers strapped their babies to their
backs, when men made animal-Skin
soles for their feet, and when human
ity bore off its dead in signs attached
to poles resting on the shoulders of the
bodybearers. But America first be-
came prominently identified with its
development when Oliver Evans built
his amphibious steam carriage in
Philadelphia about the same time
that Richard Trevithick first harness
ed steam to transportation in Eng
land. One of Trevithick's engines was
known as The Putting DeviI'. In
1903 he built a circular railroad to
London, and installed on it the Catch
Me Who Can. charging a shilling
ride. Stevenson's several early loco
motives followed in the twenties. and
his Rocket" took the first prize Of
89000 in f0r he no oncrinp
L was this engine which killed The
first man who ever lost his life in
railroad accident.
First American Locomotive.
The first locomotive ever run in
America, if we except Oliver Evans's
cross between a boat, an automobile
and a locomotive, was the Stourbridge
Lion on the Delaware and Hudson, in
May, 1929. The famous John Bull ran
on the Camden and Amboy in 1881,
and though it occupies a place of hon.
or in the national museum it still is
fiji for duty if ever called upon IL
travelled to the Chicago worlds fair
under its own power and carried So
000 people while there. The Balti-
more and Ohio was first built with
the idea that horses would pull the
trains. Then Peter Cooper wanted
them to try his engine. which had a
keg-like boiler and fIues made Of
gun barrels. He raced a horse and
won. The B. & o. then concluded to
offer a $4,000 prize for the best en-
CINE, and one of $4,000 for the second
best engine, superiority to be deter
mined by a contest similar to those
held for flying machines today II
was won by a Pennsylvania built en-
gine, called the York. From that
date forward the railroad was on a
substantial footing in the United
States, and Yankee ingenuity began
to realize what might be done to
improve this method of transporta-
tion
Rumsey, Fitch and Fulton long be-
fore had been working on the ques-
ton of steam navigation Before the
] dawn Of the 18th century George
Washington had written a letter Ger
tifying that he had witnessed trials
of the Rumsey boat, and that although
he formerly had little faith in it, he
was then convinced that Rumsey had
discovered the art of working boats
by mechanism. He was called Crazy
Rumsey" at home, exhibited a working
boat abroad and died in 1898. He had
controversy before his death with
Fitch, whom he accused Of coming
pottering around" his shop. In letters
to London friends he told of a visit
of young American engineer by the
name of Fulton, who betrayed a syn