Patent Locomotive Engine

Benjamin Tanner,
(1775-1848) after William Strickland (1788-1854)
"C. Stephenson's Patent Locomotive Engine"
from Strickland, Reports on Canals, Railways, Roads, and other Subjects, made for the Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of Internal Improvements
Philadelphia: 1826
Engraving with watercolor
Rare Book & Special Collections Division (134.4)

One year after the first railroad to carry general traffic opened in England, American architect and engineer William Strickland published this plan for a steam engine, which could pull twenty -seven wagons loaded with ninety-four tons at four miles per hour on a level grade. The engraving was issued, together with others about gas lighting, road and bridge building, and a range of other technologies to "awaken and animate the citizens of Pennsylvania, to promote and adopt those great and certain sources of national wealth and prosperity." Railroads would become the primary transportation system for the United States and remain so until the construction of interstate highways in the mid-twentieth century.