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On the Tile-boat
616 visits
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Lumber Raft
625 visits
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Bulgarian Buffalo Cart
478 visits
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Rear elevation of Pioneer and detail of valve shifter; valve face and valve. (Drawing by J. H. White.)
431 visits
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Diagram comparing the Pioneer (shaded drawing) with the Columbia, a standard 8-wheel engine of 1851. (Drawing by J. H. White.)
Columbia
Hudson River Railroad
Lowell Machine Shop, 1852
Wt. 271/2 tons (engine only)
Cyl. 161/2 x 22 inches
Wheel diam. 84 inches
Pioneer
Cumberland Valley Railroad
Seth Wilmarth, 1851
121/2 tons
81/2 x 14 inches
54 inches
423 visits
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The “Fury,” built for the Boston and Worcester Railroad in 1849 by Wilmarth. It was known as a “Shanghai” because of its great height.
537 visits
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“Pioneer” locomotive. (Drawing by J. H. White.)
563 visits
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“Pioneer” locomotive,
(1) Safety valve,
(2) spring balance,
(3) steam jet
(4) dry pipe
(5) throttle lever
(6) throttle
(7) crown bar
(8) front tube sheet
(9) check valve
(10) top rail
(11) rear-boiler bracket
(12) pedestal
(13) rocker bearing
(14) damper
(15) grate
(16) bottom rail
(17) pump heater valve
(18) cylinder lubricator
(19) reversing lever
(20) brake shoe
(21) mud ring
(22) blowoff cock
(23) ashpan
(Drawing by J. H. White.)
475 visits
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Patent Iron Suspension Railroad Bridge.
The undersigned would inform the officers of Railroads and others, that he is prepared to furnish Drawings and Estimates for Bridges, Roofs, etc., on the plan of Bollman’s Patent.
The performance of these bridges, some of which have been in use for six years, has given entire satisfaction. Their simplicity of construction renders repairs easy and cheap, and by a peculiar connection of the Main and Panel Rods at the bottom of the Posts, all danger from the effects of expansion, which has heretofore been the chief objection to Iron Bridges, is entirely removed.
J. H. TEGMEYER,
Baltimore, Md.
561 visits
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Description of first trip in the car
When I got this car ready to run one night, I took it out and I had a young fellow with me; I thought I might need him to help push in case the car didn't work…. We ran from the area of the shop where it was built down on Taylor Street. We started out and ran up Worthington Street hill, on top of what you might call "the Bluff" in Springfield. Then we drove along over level roads from there to the home of Mr. Markham , and there we refilled this tank with water. [At this point he was asked if it was pretty well emptied by then.] Yes, I said in my account of it that when we got up there the water was boiling furiously. Well, no doubt it was. We refilled it and then we turned it back and drove down along the Central Street hill and along Maple, crossed into State Street, dropped down to Dwight, went west along Dwight to the vicinity where we had a shed that we could put the car in for the night. During that trip we had run, I think, just about six miles, maybe a little bit more. That was the first trip with this vehicle. It was the first trip of anything more than a few hundred yards that the car had ever made.
456 visits
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One day, when Handel was seven years old, his father announced his intention of paying a visit to the castle of the Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels. Handel was most anxious to be allowed to accompany his father, because he had heard that the Duke kept a great company of musicians to perform in his chapel. But the father refused his consent, and the boy turned away with a look of fixed determination in his eyes. 'I will go, even if I have to run every inch of the way!'
Handel did not know then that forty miles lay between his home and the castle, but having formed his bold resolution he awaited the moment when his father set forth on his journey, and then, running behind the closed carriage, he did his best to keep pace with it. The roads were long and muddy, and although he panted on bravely for a long distance, the child's strength began at last to fail, and, fearing that he would be left behind, he called to the coachman to stop. At the sound of the boy's voice his father thrust his head out of the window, and was about to give vent to his anger at George's disobedience; but a glance at the poor little bedraggled figure in the road, with its pleading face, melted the surgeon's heart. They were at too great a distance from home to turn back, and so Handel was lifted into the carriage and carried to Weissenfels, where he arrived tired and footsore, but supremely happy at having won his point.
655 visits
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Phantom illustration of Benz' first automobile.
(From Carl Benz, Father of the Automobile Industry, by L. M. Fanning, New York, 1955.)
463 visits
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Illustration from U.S. patent 385087,
issued to Carl Benz, showing the horizontal plane
of the flywheel, a feature utilized by the Duryeas in their machine.
450 visits
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The conveyance of a Persian official traveling in disgrace to Teheran at the call of the shah
375 visits
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Chauffeur opening door for a lady
349 visits
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The 8 h.p. twin cylinder Uni, with wheel steering and free engine. The power plant slides upon rails at the rear platform by means of a cable actuated from the lever beside the driver
415 visits
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The 16 h.p. Uni-motorcycle, with spring suspension, magneto ignition, free engine and wheel steering.
407 visits
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The hackney coach was a cumbrous vehicle with two horses, and, in 1823, one-horsed vehicles were introduced, called cabriolets, speedily shortened into cabs. They began modestly with twelve, and in 1831 had increased to one hundred and sixty-five.
533 visits
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On December 23, 1834, Joseph Aloysius Hansom, an architect, took out a patent, No. 6733, for "a vehicle for conveying loads, etc.," and from that time to this his name has been inseparably connected in England with cabs. Not that his cab was like the present "hansom," which is a product of much evolution. There was no back seat for the driver, and its "safety" consisted in its cranked axle. He sold his rights to a company for £10,000, but never got a penny piece of it. The only money he ever got out of it was £300, which, when the company had got into a muddle, was paid him to take temporary management and put things straight again.
360 visits
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The royal assent was given on September 22, 1831, to "An Act to amend the laws relating to Hackney Carriages," etc., by which it was enacted that, up to January 5, 1833, they should be limited to twelve hundred, and, after that date, there was to be no limitation to their number, except that caused by the law of demand and supply. The hackney coach was a cumbrous vehicle with two horses, and, in 1823, one-horsed vehicles were introduced, called cabriolets, speedily shortened into cabs.
516 visits
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The woodcut shows the style of carriage associated—grotesquely associated, it seems to our eyes—with the armour and costume of the Middle Ages. It might represent Duke Theseus going in state through the streets of Athens, hung with tapestry and cloth of gold, to the solemn deed of arms of Palamon and Arcite.
577 visits
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The illustration may represent to us the merry Sir Dinadan driving to the tournament of the Castle of Maidens
650 visits
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Zimmerman and his machine
218 visits
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In 1830 all this had disappeared, and we find in Mr. Nasmyth's sketch a regular fire-box, such as is used to this moment. In one word, the Rocket of 1829 is different from the Rocket of 1830 in almost every conceivable respect; and we are driven perforce to the conclusion that the Rocket of 1829 never worked at all on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway; the engine of 1830 was an entirely new engine.
445 visits
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Boats on Nile about 2500 B.C.
203 visits
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Caroche, covered with leather, studded with gold-headed nails,
percherons; period, end of sixteenth century.
689 visits
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Shop engine, 1901
604 visits
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The Wright Brothers Aero Engine
396 visits
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First flight engine, 1903, cross section
489 visits
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First flight engine, 1903, assembly
443 visits
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First flight engine, 1903 rear view
459 visits
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4-Cylinder vertical engine assembly
463 visits
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4-Cylinder vertical engine assembly
489 visits
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First flight engine, 1903
524 visits
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This is one of the most common of sedan chairs, used by the peasantry; though there are others still meaner, and without any covering over head. The wages of labour are so low, and the price of provisions so cheap, that any man above a common labourer can afford to be carried in his chair.
1309 visits
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This machine, like a baker’s cart, is the kind of wheel carriage which is most common in the country, and such as even the high officers of state ride in, when performing land journies in bad weather, and the driver invariably sits on the shaft in the aukward manner here represented. They have no springs, nor any seat in the inside, the persons using them always sitting cross-legged on a cushion at the bottom. In these carts the gentlemen of Lord Macartney’s embassy who had not horses, were accommodated, over a stone pavement full of rutts and holes. When ladies use them, a bamboo screen is let down in front to prevent their being stared at by passengers, and on each side, the light is admitted through a square hole just large enough for a person’s head.
1130 visits
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The grand canal of China, or rather the water communication between the northern and southern extremities of the empire by a succession of canals and rivers, is certainly the first inland navigation in the world. The multitude of vessels, of every size and shape, is not to be estimated. The large one in the print is one of those which carried the British embassador and his suite up the Pei-ho to the neighbourhood of Pekin, which were in every respect comfortable and commodious. On passing bridges, which are very frequent in the neighbourhood of all towns and villages, the masts are usually lowered down; but many of the bridges are lofty enough to admit the smaller kind of barges to pass underneath with their masts standing. The bridges are almost as various in their shape and construction as the barges, and some of them by no means destitute of taste.
877 visits
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Some millions of Chinese live entirely on the water, in boats and barges of various kinds, some occupied in carrying articles of provisions and merchandize, others in conveying passengers, some in feeding and rearing ducks, and others in fishing. Some of these vessels have masts and sails, others are forced forwards with large sculls or pushed on with poles, some are dragged along by men, and others, but very rarely, by horses. Near the head of each vessel is suspended in some convenient place, one of those noisy instruments well known in this country by the name of gong, which is used to regulate the motions of the trackers, and to give notice to other vessels of the approach and intentions of the one that beats the signal.
1384 visits
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The vehicles of this description are nearly as various in the different provinces of China, and among the different ranks of inhabitants, as their boats and barges are. The one here engraved belongs to a person in a certain `rank` of life, probably an inferior mandarin. It will be observed that, instead of carrying the poles in the hands, as we do, the Chinese carry the chairs on the shoulders by means of a cross-bar fixed to the poles by straps: but different kinds of chairs are carried in different ways.
890 visits
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A Porter carrying goods
1221 visits
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A Pack Horse
708 visits
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A Flat Boat
Another illustration of his [Robert Fulton] inventive gift belongs to his boyhood days. He and one of his playmates used to go out fishing in a flat boat which they propelled by the use of long poles. Getting tired of this method of navigation, Robert made two crude paddle-wheels, one for each side of the boat, connecting them by a sort of double crank, which the boys united in turning. They could then easily propel the boat in their fishing trips to various parts of the lake, and keenly enjoyed this novel and easy way of going a-fishing.
629 visits
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The Clermont
Fulton returned in 1806 to America, where, with money furnished by his friend Livingston, he began to construct another steamboat which he called the Clermont, after the name of Livingston's home on the Hudson. This boat was 130 feet long and 18 feet wide, with a mast and a sail, and on each side a wheel 15 feet in diameter, fully exposed to view.
One morning in August, 1807, a throng of expectant people gathered on the banks of the North River at New York, to see the trial of the Clermont. Everybody was looking for failure. People had all along spoken of Fulton as a crack-brained dreamer, and had called the Clermont "Fulton's Folly." "Of course the thing would not move." "That any man with common-sense might know," they said. So while Fulton was waiting to give the signal to start, these wiseacres were getting ready to jest at his failure.
Finally, at the signal, the Clermont moved slowly, and then stood perfectly still. "Just what I have been saying," said one onlooker with emphasis. "I knew the boat would not go," said another. "Such a thing is impossible," said a third. But they spoke too soon, for after a little adjustment of the machinery, the Clermont steamed proudly up the Hudson.
565 visits
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Telegraph and Railroad
460 visits
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We must remember that travelling was no such simple and easy matter then as it is now. As the planters in Virginia usually lived on the banks of one of the many rivers, the simplest method of travel was by boat, up or down stream. There were cross-country roads, but these at best were rough, and sometimes full of roots and stumps. Often they were nothing more than forest paths. In trying to follow such roads the traveler at times lost his way and occasionally had to spend a night in the woods. But with even such makeshifts for roads, the planter had his lumbering old coach to which, on state occasions, he harnessed six horses and drove in great style.
591 visits
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A Stage Coach of the Eighteenth Century
363 visits
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One of the largest sailing-ships afloat is the French five-master, La France, launched in 1890 on the Clyde, and owned by Messrs A. D. Bordes et Fils, who possess a large fleet of sailing-vessels. In 1891 she came from Iquique to Dunkirk in one hundred and five days with 6000 tons of nitrate; yet she was stopped on the Tyne when proceeding to sea with 5500 tons of coal, and compelled to take out 500 tons on the ground that she was overladen.
843 visits
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A kafila (caravan) of slaves
477 visits
