ABSTRACT
In perfecting Thomas Newcomen’s engine in the late eighteenth century, James Watt developed the rst practical steam engine. By 1829, George Stephenson had perfected Trevithick’s early design of a steam locomotive. After several early European attempts, Robert Fulton developed the practical steamboat in the early years of the nineteenth century. So, in a relatively short time, Watt’s engine was applied to railroads and ships. Yet it took almost another century before the practical development of the automobile. Without doubt, the automobile was the outstanding feature of land-transport technology in the twentieth century.
