ade a steam-engine which he felt sure was
an improvement on the one that Watt had made in England.

Peter Cooper's particular device was a plan to do away with the crank,
and transform the rectilinear motion of the piston into rotary motion.
He figured it out that this would save two-fifths of the steam, and so
stated in his application for a patent, a copy of which is before the
writer.

The Patent Office then was looked after by the President in person.
Peter Cooper's patent was signed by John Quincy Adams, President, Henry
Clay, Secretary of State, and William Wirt, Attorney General. The
patent was good for fourteen years, so any one who cares to infringe on
it can do so now without penalty.

There were then no trained patent-examiners, and the President and
Secretary of State were not inclined to hamper inventors with
technicalities. You paid your fee, the patent was granted, and all
questions of priority were left to be fought out in the courts. More
patents have been granted to one individual--say, Thomas A. Edison--than
were issued in America, all told, up to the time that Peter Cooper went
down to Washington in person and explained his invention to John Quincy
Adams and Henry Clay, who evidently were very glad to sign the patent,
rather than bother to understand the invention. In his application Peter
Cooper states, "This invention is a suitable motor for hauling
land-carriages."

It was one year before this that Stephenson in England had given an
exhibition of his locomotive, the "Rocket," on a circular two-mile track
in Manchester. Cooper had not seen the "Rocket," but Stephenson's
example had fired his brain, and he had in his own mind hastened the
system.

At this time he was thirty-six years old. His glue business was
prosperous. Several thousand dollars of his surplus he had invested in
charcoal-kilns near Baltimore. From this he had gone into a land
speculation in the suburbs of that city. His partners had abandoned the
enterprise and left him to face the disgrace of failure.

Commerce was drifting away from Baltimore to Philadelphia and New York.
The Erie Canal had been opened and it looked as if this would be the one
route to the West--the Hudson River to Albany, thence by canal to
Buffalo, and on by the Great Lakes to the land of promise.

Pennsylvania had a system of canals, partially in use, and the rest in
building, which would open up a route to the Ohio River at Pittsburgh.
But engineers