STEAM AND GASOLINE ENGINES 189 



pulsory school attendance has constantly advanced until it 

 stands at seventeen years in some states, sixteen in not a few, 

 and fourteen pretty generally. The first part of the nineteenth 

 century saw the public graded schools gradually fill up so that 

 since 1870 there has been no increase of the percentage of the 

 population that is attending them. But there has been a marked 

 increase in the attendance in the public high schools. Since 

 1900 high-school attendance has increased seven fold, college and 

 university attendance twelve fold, while the increase in the general 

 population has not even doubled. It might be a fit tribute if 

 the school children of the world should erect monuments to 

 Papin, Newcomen, and Watt, inventors of the steam engine that 

 has made possible their commercial freedom, their public schools, 

 and yet perhaps the boys and girls themselves, happy in their 

 increased opportunities, are their best imperishable monuments. 



While the stationary engine was rapidly increasing produc- 

 tion, attempts were being made to use steam power for distribu- 

 tion also. The first practical steamboat, also commercially 

 successful, was built by Symington and put to service on the 

 Forth and Clyde Canal in the year 1802. Fulton's famous 

 steamer, the "Clermont," laboriously made its way up the 

 Hudson River first in 1807, and plied regularly after that between 

 New York and Albany. The "Clermont" was not Fulton's first 

 steamboat, for while in France in 1803 he had built and operated 

 a small one on the river Seine. 



The locomotive appeared in 1804 but it was a very primitive 

 affair. It ran on a road of flat iron plates with the outer edges 

 turned up so the engine would not run off. The toothed drive 

 wheels played into toothed strips on the roadbed. It was used 

 for hauling cars of coal at the mines. The rolled malleable iron 

 rail with the flange on the wheels of engine and car came into 

 use first about 1820. It was considerably later, however, before 

 smooth rails and smooth-faced wheels were used or even tried, 

 for it was so perfectly evident that the smooth wheel would not 

 grip a smooth rail enough to give traction that no one ever 



