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Caption: Dedication - Transportation Building Dedication Addresses
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possibility of its application for the purpose of propulsion* The great philosophers thought was the confining of steam under the highest pressure attainable and its employment as a propelling power by discharge against the atmosphere, the resistance of which would force forward the wheeled vehicle supporting the boiler. Whimsical as this seems to us, it is, nevertheless, the first suggestion of steam power for locomotion recorded in history. And it wasn't until the world was thousands of years old that a man appeared upon the scene with even this much to suggest. Sixteen hundred and eighty was when Sir Isaac evolved the idea, which at best was only such; a dream of what might be done, and never further extended by him. Not only is it the high pressure he proposed that is the essential of today, but the steam jet that he placed in the rear to push, we now have in froht to pull; or what leads potentially to do so through the forced draft and consequent rapid combustion caused by the vacuum producing steam escapement. Following Newton a French nobleman precipitated himself into a good deal more than the traditional peck of trouble; brought things to the pass that he not only was shut up in a mad house, but fastened into a straight jacket for projecting theories as to the development of steam as a force destined to entirely revolutionize existing conditions. 20
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