Around the year 1700 the steam engine made it possible to convert heat into kinetic energy. Soon, the dream of replacing horses with machines for pulling emerged. However, it took almost a century before a steam engine was successfully constructed that was light and powerful enough to pull more than its own weight.

The Steam Engine
At the beginning of the 1700s, the Englishman Thomas Newcomen manufactured a steam engine for pumping water out of mines. The news reached Sweden around 1730 through Mårten Triewald, who assured that the machine was "so perfect that little improvement can be expected."

The Steam Carriage
In the 1760s, the Frenchman Nicolas Joseph Cugnot built a steam-powered carriage. It had a top speed of 4 kilometres per hour, needed to be "refueled" with water and fuel every eight hundred metres, and was terribly difficult to steer.

Steam Power
During the latter part of the 1700s, the steam engine was gradually improved, especially by the Scotsman James Watt. This made it increasingly useful in the growing industry as a driving force for grain mills, looms, rolling mills, threshing machines, and more.

The Locomotive
The first functional locomotive was designed by the Englishman Richard Trevithick in the early 1800s. It was powered by a steam engine operating under high pressure – and therefore much more efficient than its predecessors.

The Railway
The first locomotives were slow and heavy. But now the time had come to open the world's first railway with steam-powered locomotives for public traffic. It ran between Stockton and Darlington in northern England and was inaugurated in 1825.