Peter Cooper's Tom Thumb Races a Horse

Inventor and businessman Peter Cooper needed a practical locomotive to move material for an ironworks he had purchased in Baltimore, and to fill that need he designed and built a small locomotive he called the Tom Thumb.

On August 28, 1830, Cooper was demonstrating the Tom Thumb by hauling cars of passengers outside Baltimore. He was challenged to race his little locomotive against one of the trains being pulled by a horse on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

Cooper accepted the challenge and the race of horse against machine was on. The Tom Thumb was beating the horse until the locomotive threw a belt from a pulley and had to be brought to a stop.

The horse won the race that day. But Cooper and his little engine had shown that steam locomotives had a bright future. Before long the horse-drawn trains on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad were replaced by steam-powered trains.

This depiction of the famous race was painted a century later by an artist employed by the U.S. Department of Transportation, Carl Rakeman.