SECTION OF TRANSPORTATION AND ENGINEERING. 161 



11 Stourbridge Lion." This bas been deposited by Messrs. Lindsay & 

 Early, Carbondale, Pennsylvania. Upon the fall-size model of this, the 

 first locomotive to turn a driving-wheel upon a railroad built for traffic 

 on the Western Continent, which was deposited in the National Museum 

 several years ago by the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, is a 

 framed letter from Horatio Allen, who for sixty years was a couspicuous 

 figure among American civil engineers. The letter reads: 



Homewood, South Orange, New Jersey, 



January 18, lb88. 

 Dear Sir: In reply to your inquiries, I write to say that the locomotive known as 

 the "Stourbridge Lion" was the first locomotive run on this continent. 



That the occurrence took place at Hornsclale, Pennsylvania, August 9, 1829, on the 

 mine railroad of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. 



That the locomotive was one of three built for that company in England, in 1828, 

 under my direction as to plans, which were received in the city of New York early in 

 the year 1829. 



That, through circumstances not necessary to state, I ran the locomotive myself, a 

 responsibility I had never undertaken before and have never repeated since. 



Thus, on this first movement by steam on railroads on this continent, I was en- 

 gineer, brakeman, conductor, and passenger. 



Horatio Allen. 

 Mr. J. E. Watkins, 



Curator, National Museum, Smithsonian Institution. 



It is the intention to mount the boiler on the original driving-wheels, 

 collected in 1888, and to replace many of the origiual parts, which are 

 still in existence, and thus make as complete a restoration of this old 

 locomotive as possible. The death of Horatio Allen, on the 31st of De- 

 cember, 1889, is greatly to be regretted. He had hoped to live to see 

 the work of restoring the " Stourbridge Lion" accomplished, a matter 

 in which he took the deepest interest. 



Several valuable relics of the early days of the electric telegraph 

 have been obtained ; among them a piece of the original wire used by 

 Alfred Vail * in his experiments at the Speedwell Iron Works, near 

 Morristown, New Jersey, 1837-'43. 



It was over this wire that the message " A patient waiter is no 

 loser," was sent on January 6,1838. The ability to send and decipher 

 this message was the test by which Judge Stephen Vail (father of 

 Alfred Vail) was induced to furnish funds to Morse and Vail, which 

 enabled them to prosecute their researches and to construct the tele- 

 graphic machines which were used in experiments before the Congres- 

 sional committee at Washington, which finally culminated in the appro- 

 priation of $30,000 by the general government for the construction of 

 a telegraph line from Washington to Baltimore, in 1844. 



A piece of the wire which formed a part of that original telegraph 

 line, which ran from Mount Clare depot, Baltimore, to the Capitol at 

 Washington, and over which the message, "What hath God wrought," 



* See " The American Inventors of the Telegraph." — The Century, 1888. 

 H. Mis. 129, pt. 2 11 



