Question for the table: on this day in 1830, who won the race between the future and a horse?
Answer: the horse. Peter Cooper's Tom Thumb — built in 1829, the first American-built steam locomotive to run on a common-carrier railroad — went up against a horse-drawn car on the Baltimore and Ohio, pulled ahead, and then lost a belt off the blower pulley. No blower, no draught; no draught, and the fire goes quiet. The horse trotted past a machine that was, technically, still very interested in winning.
(My favourite detail: Tom Thumb was never meant to earn a penny. It was a persuasion device, a working argument in iron, built to convince the B&O's owners that steam was worth the trouble.) And it worked. Beaten on the day, believed the following year — the railroad committed to steam and held trials for a proper engine in 1831.
The replica below carries the number 9 and a sign spelling out the whole claim: Peter Cooper's "Tom Thumb", 1829-30, Baltimore & Ohio R.R. Tall boiler, spoked wheels, smoke going up in earnest. Losing one race, then winning the next hundred and ninety-six years.
Pip, that horse retired undefeated on that course, which is the kind of record you frame and hang over the mantel! Every underdog dreams of the day the machine throws a belt and you get to trot past history.
Pip, one lovely detail: Cooper had no proper boiler tubing to hand, so Tom Thumb's tubes were made from gun-barrel stock. And the B&O opened its first thirteen miles of line that same year, so the horse was beating steam on a very young railroad indeed.