How Trains Impacted America

America is known as a country of freedom; the freedom to choose between Italian or Mexican for dinner, the freedom to be a lawyer or a teacher, to choose to live in an apartment in New York or a cottage in Washington. Americans have the freedom to speak their minds and the freedom to listen to whomever they choose. Within these freedoms is the freedom to embark on a dream that seems impossible. Most would call the unknown crazy, Americans would call it revolutionary. While America was not the home of the first railway system, Americans used railroads to advance the country in a whole new way. Railroads have impacted how the country is run and continues to have a lasting effect today.

No one person can be credited for the invention of the railroad; rather there are many individuals who contributed to the railways final design. To begin, as far back as the 16th century, Germans were using horse-drawn wagons, pulled along wooden rails. These systems were known as “wagonways” and are grandparents of modern railways. By 1776, wooden rails and wheels had been replaced by iron. Eventually, the wheels became flanged, allowing the wheels to better grip the rails. The major turning point of locomotives was the invention of the steam engine. The steam engine was invented by three different British inventors, over a period of a hundred years; to give only one man the credit would be a crime.

The first man who had a hand in the steam engine was Thomas Savery. In 1698, Savery patented an “engine to raise water by fire”. The machine was used as a pump, which began by water being heated to vaporize it, causing it to fill a tank with steam, then the steam created a vacuum by isolating the tank from the steam source and condensing the steam....

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...f “How can this be improved?” While American’s did not invent the first railroad, America certainly did put the railroad to good use. They improved it, and has had many wonderful accomplishments credited to them because of that determination to never stop trying. Railroads have impacted the America runs and its effects are still reverberating through the country today.

Works Cited

http://www.ushistory.org/us/25b.asp

http://www.flowofhistory.com/units/eme/17/FC112

http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove/themes/story_47_1.html

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/rrhtml/rrintro.html

http://www.gocurrency.com/articles/invention-rail-road.htm

http://www.egr.msu.edu/~lira/supp/steam/

http://www.whoinventedit.net/who-invented-the-train.html

http://mikes.railhistory.railfan.net/r013.html

http://www.laughtergenealogy.com/bin/histprof/misc/railroads.html