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Show An Extraordinary Man. Charles King, in his recollections, tells of John Stevens and the part he played in modern trans-portation. trans-portation. He was the partner of Robert Fulton in the first Hudson river steamboat venture. When they pulled the old Clermont out into the stream and started for Albany, the crowd jeered and not a newspaper in New York mentioned the circumstance. That was on Aug. 7th, 1807. They made the trip in thirty-two hours and returned in thirty hours, making five miles an hour. Stevens later built the Phoenix, which he ran to New Brunswick. Fulton thought nine miles an hour would bo the limit for steam sailing. Stevens built a boat that ran nineteen. Stevens Invented the tubular boiler; he connected New York and Philadelphia by rail in 1831. It was he, too, who invented the T rail. Ho declared that locomo-tives locomo-tives might easily run 100 miles per hour, but for convenience he thought they might be limited to thirty or forty miles. Stevens invented tho first propeller. Reading of his work, it almost looks as though he was raised up and "set apart" to introduce steam navigation on the water and steam carriage on land. He. was the Columbus of steam propulsion. Many finer ships than those of Columbus have since his day crossed the Atlantic, but the great glory still lingers around the little Pinto, Nina and Santa Marie. Finer trains than Stevens' now ply between New York and Philadelphia, Phila-delphia, but the principle of them was born in the brain of Stevens and they still run on his T rails. Finer ships cross the Atlantic than was his Phoenix, but he showed the way. |