By rolling balls in grooves along the top chord he discovered how the frame work deflected and thus learned how to design a bridge to carry a predetermined load. He wrote a "Practical Treatise on Bridge Building," which was printed in Utica, N. Y., in 1847. In 1851, Haupt, in America, and Bow, in England, produced books on bridge design, the forerunners of a literature which justifies one in saying with the old Hebrew "Of the making of books there is no end."
Tramways were first built in England about two hundred and fifty years ago for the purpose of transporting coal from collieries to the sea. They were first made of two lines of flat stones to afford a track for the wagons. Civil engineers, or rather surveyors, were employed to secure proper curves and grades. Longitudinal timbers enabled heavier loads to be drawn and when iron rails were placed on the timbers, thus further reducing resistance and wear and permitting still heavier loads to be drawn, the tramways became railways. The first rails were channeled, or grooved, and it was a stroke of real genius when some man used a plain rail and put the flange on the wheel. It effected great economy and was very simple, but then the really great things in this world are very simple in their inception. In 1821 the Stockton and Darlington Railway was incorporated in England, this road being operated by steam locomotives in 1825.
The success of the steam locomotive caused a
