Oliver Evans was a home grown inventive genius, and revolutionized the milling industry in the late 18th century, advanced steam power from primitive to powerful, and built the first automobile and steam powered watercraft. He made some bold predictions about the future of technology. In a time when the smallest improvement was opposed, he said...
The time will come when people will travel in stages moved by steam engines, from one city to another, almost as fast as birds fly, fifteen or twenty miles in an hour.
Passing through the air with such velocity, changing the scene in such rapid succession, will be a most exhilarating, delightful exercise.
A carriage will set out from Washington in the morning, the passengers will breakfast at Baltimore, dine at Philadelphia, and sup at New York, the same day.
To accomplish this, two sets of railways will be laid so nearly level as not in any place to deviate more than two degrees from a horizontal line, made of wood or iron or paths of broken stone or gravel, with a rail to guide the carriage, so that they may pass each other in different directions and travel by night as well as by day; and the passengers will sleep in these stages as comfortably as they now do in stage boats....
And it shall come to pass, that the memory of those sordid and wicked wretches who opposed such improvements, will be execrated, by every good man, as they ought to be now.
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