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In China the art of printing is of great antiquity. Lithography was well known in Germany, by the very name which it still bears, nearly three hundred years before Senefelder reinvented it; and specimens of the ancient art are yet to be seen in the Royal Museum at Munich. Steam-locomotion by sea and land, had long been dreamt of and attempted.
The seats for the humbler class of travellers in these early experiments in steam-locomotion, were open trucks, without any protection whatever from the wind and rain; and damp weather having set in with the afternoon, the unfortunate occupants of these vehicles were, on the train drawing up at the London terminus, found to be in a pitiable condition from their long journey; blue-faced, stiff-necked, sneezing, rain-beaten, chilled to the marrow, many of the men being hatless; in fact, they resembled people who had been out all night in an open boat on a rough sea, rather than inland excursionists for pleasure.
The directors were at first strongly opposed to the use of steam-locomotion, but were induced by Stephenson, before finally rejecting the idea, to offer a reward of £500 for the best locomotive that could be made. Of four engines which were entered for the competition, Stephenson's Rocket was the only one that would move, and it proved able to travel at the rate of thirty-five miles an hour.
First discoverers of steam-locomotion are turning up every few months in embarrassing numbers, but we cannot feel that we have a right to suppress the claims of honest Rumsey, the protégé of Washington.
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