The Centennial Corliss

Machinery Hall, Philadelphia, 1876

The engine that opened America’s hundredth birthday: forty feet tall, fourteen hundred horsepower, turning every machine in Machinery Hall from one shaft. President Grant and the Emperor of Brazil started her together with two hand levers, and the crowd — Walt Whitman among them — stood and watched an engine the way crowds watch a coronation. She ran the fair without missing a stroke, at exactly our governor’s setting: thirty-six revolutions.

Twin 40-inch cylinders, ten feet of stroke, 36 rpm, some 1,400 horses on demand — and almost perfectly silent.

On our bed, at her own thirty-six revolutions: about a hundred and fifty horses and ninety millions of duty.

One of the cabinet’s specimens, each ready for the test bed.