Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 154, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 June 1911 — WILL HONOR PHINEAS DAVIS [ARTICLE]

WILL HONOR PHINEAS DAVIS

Railroad to Erect Tablet to Memory of Inventor of Locomotives That Burn Coal. The Baltimore & Ohio railroad intends to erect a tablet to the memory of Phineas Davis, inventor of the first coal-burning locomotive in America, whose body occupied an unmarked grave in the cemetery of the old Friends meeting-house at York, Pa. The career of Davis is among the most romantic of American inventors. Beginning as an apprentice to a noted watch and clock maker, he created a sensation in 1820 .by producing a perfect timepiece not larger'than a nickel flve-cent piece. Later, while he was connected with a firm of machinists, he had a share in the building of the .first iron steamboat In America, which was launched on the Susquehanna river. In 1832 the Baltimore & Ohio offered a prize of $3,500 for a coalburning locomotive that would excel all others in a competitive test, and In this Davis won over Peter Cooper and other noted American inventors. He was then taken into the service of the company and three years later, as a result of many experiments, he brought out another engine which was claimed to be superior to anything produced in America or England prior to that time. On the trial trip, over rails laid on wooden stringers, Davis lost his life through the breaking of one of these rails. He was only forty years old at the time of his death, and, as the development of motive power advanced, he was forgotten through achievements that overshadowed what he had done.