![]() On August 28, 1830, Cooper’s engine, which he called the “Tom Thumb,” was undergoing testing on B&O tracks near Baltimore when a horse-drawn train pulled up alongside it and challenged Cooper (and “Tom Thumb”) to a race. Enter industrialist Peter Cooper: Cooper, who not coincidentally owned extensive land holdings over the proposed route of the railroad (the value of which would grow dramatically if the railroad succeeded), offered to design and build just such an engine. However, the company struggled to produce a steam engine capable of traveling over rough and uneven terrain, instead relying on horse-drawn trains. company granted a charter for transporting both passengers and freight. In 1827, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad became the first U.S. America’s first steam locomotive lost a race to a horse. The sales ploy worked-we’re still using the term “horsepower” today-and his engines soon became the industry standard, leading directly to the invention of the first steam locomotive in 1804. He calculated how much power a single horse working in a mill could produce over a period of time (though many scientists now believe his estimates were far too high), a figure that he dubbed “horsepower.” Using this unit of measurement, he then came up with a figure that indicated how many horses just one of his engines could replace. ![]() Watt’s innovation was to add a separate condenser, greatly improving the engine’s efficiency.Ī savvy salesman, Watt knew that he needed a way to market his new product. Newcomen’s design required constant cooling down and re-heating, wasting vast amounts of energy. ![]() In the 1760s, the Scottish inventor began tinkering with an earlier version of the engine designed by Thomas Newcomen. James Watt didn’t invent the steam engine, but he did create the world’s first modern one and developed the means of measuring its power. The term 'horsepower' originated as a marketing tool.
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