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indifferent success and many failures were recorded, the pendulum
of public confidence in this aid to inland commerce swung away,
and highway improvement by means of stone roads and toll road
companies came into favor in the interval between the nation”s
two eras of river improvement and canal building
As most of the efforts to improve the rivers, however, met with
indifferent success and many failures were recorded, the pendulum
of public confidence in this aid to inland commerce swung away,
and highway improvement by means of stone roads and toll road
companies came into favor in the interval between the nation”s
two eras of river improvement and canal building.

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first plan in America to operate a land vehicle by steam
It was doubtless Fitch”s experiments in 1785 that led to the
first plan in America to operate a land vehicle by steam. Oliver
Evans, a neighbor and acquaintance of Fitch”s, petitioned the
Pennsylvania Legislature in 1786 for the right of operating
wagons propelled by steam on the highways of that State. This
petition was derisively rejected; but a similar one made to the
Legislature of Maryland was granted on the ground that such
action could hurt nobody. Evans in 1802 took fiery revenge on the
scoffers by actually running his little five-horse-power carriage
through Philadelphia. The rate of speed, however, was so slow
that the idea of moving vehicles by steam was still considered
useless for practical purposes. Eight years later, Evans offered
to wager $3000 that, on a level road, he could make a carriage
driven by steam equal the speed of the swiftest horse, but he
found no response. In 1812 he asserted that he was willing to
wager that he could drive a steam carriage on level rails at a
rate of fifteen miles an hour. Evans thus anticipated the belief
of Stephenson that steam-driven vehicles would travel best on
railed tracks.

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