No Experience in Modern Times: The Inventive American Mind

John B. Jervis

Americans have long been fascinated by innovators. From Thomas Edison and Henry Ford to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs we have seen our lives shaped by the products of their ingenuity. But one man who put America on the road to a most remarkable technological future is little known today.

John Jervis was born in 1795 near Rome, New York, then a frontier village. With a sixth-grade education, he labored on his father’s farm and, in 1817, picked up summer work cutting brush for the construction of the Erie Canal, then being built near his home. His imagination caught fire.

The audacity of the project was stunning. The longest canal in the country, near Boston, extended only twenty-seven miles. The Erie would reach more than three hundred miles through raw wilderness. It required absolute precision. One surveyor, for practice, traced a hundred-mile circle over rough terrain. At the end, his calculations were off by only an inch and a half.

To Jervis, this was magical. He devoted his winters to learning enough science and math to understand how it worked. He was quickly promoted and eventually put in charge of a section of the canal, with its complicated locks, weirs, and aqueducts.

Slight and baldheaded, Jervis had the appearance of an accountant and the severe mind of a Puritan. The Erie’s success had sparked canal fever in America, and Jervis became the superintendent of the next big project, the Delaware & Hudson Canal. It was the largest private enterprise to that time, the nation’s first million-dollar venture. He showed his pioneer hardiness by hiking the entire 110-mile length of the proposed ditch, across New York State and along the Delaware River Valley to the coal fields near Honesdale, Pennsylvania.

The first locomotive in America

Building this canal through this hilly territory was hard enough — it required 110 locks, 22 more than the Erie. Surmounting the mountain that separated its terminus from the anthracite mines was a unique challenge. Jervis devised a series of ramps, with stationary steam engines to pull rail cars up, horses to haul them on the flats. He ordered from England the first locomotive ever seen in America in an attempt to cut costs — economy, along with simplicity, was Jervis’s guiding principle.

The locomotive didn’t work, but it sent Jervis’s career in a new direction. Soon afterward, he designed and built the first passenger railroad in the country, a short line from Albany to Schenectady, New York. This time, he had the locomotive built domestically.

On August 9, 1831, passengers enjoyed the first ride in stage-coach-like cars. They were subject to a rain of sparks from the engine's stack and had to keep swatting at their smoldering clothes during the 46-minute trip. Within six months, twenty-five railroad companies had applied for charters in New York State alone.

Next, Jervis designed a new type of locomotive, with small wheels on a swivel in front to hold it on the rails. It became the national standard, allowing trains to reach the incredible speed of fifty miles an hour. The invention could have made him wealthy, but Jervis was repelled by the accumulation of money for its own sake. He declined to patent the device.

Next, Jervis took on another and very different project. A cholera epidemic had killed more than three thousand people in New York City in 1832. City officials sought a reliable source of drinking water for the booming city. The plan was to create a reservoir in rural Croton, Westchester County, and construct an aqueduct 33 miles long across rivers and valleys. The ten-million-dollar cost of the project would be eight times the city's annual budget.

Building the system was, Jervis wrote, a “grave responsibility,” especially as it had to be based on “no specific experience in this country or hardly any in modern times.” It wasn’t easy. During construction, a heavy rainstorm sent water washing over the earthen dam. When it failed, three people were killed by the downstream deluge.

Jervis designed a new, more durable dam (it lasted until 1906) and completed the project. He had planned to run the drinking water over the Harlem River on a low bridge. The backers of the project wanted a high bridge that emulated a Roman aqueduct. Jervis thought it an unnecessary extravagance, but went along. The sixteen-arch bridge served as a monument to the project’s success. It still stands today.

The Croton High Bridge to Manhattan

Jervis returned to railroading with the design of the Hudson River line, the first high-speed track in America. Completed in 1851, it served as the basis of the New York Central line, which would speed passengers all the way to Chicago. At this point Jervis took his first vacation in three decades. Characteristically, he used the time to inspect engineering projects in Europe.

He spent the next sixteen years building and operating railroads through the Midwest. When he finally retired in 1866, he returned to Rome. To keep busy, he founded the Rome Merchant Iron Mill, wrote two books, and gave public lectures. He died in 1885 at the age of eighty-nine.

I’ll be giving a presentation about Benedict Arnold and the Revolutionary War in the Hudson Valley at Historic Red Hook (7562 North Broadway) on Saturday, February 24 at high noon. It’s also available on Zoom. Click HERE for more info.