When the father and son of the Cherepanovs for the first time in Russia built a machine capable of moving on rails thanks to the power of steam, they did not invent a new name for it, but used the already familiar word "steamer".
Instructions
Step 1
"The pillar of smoke is boiling, the steamer is smoking. Diversity, revelry, excitement, anticipation, impatience, our people are having fun. And faster, faster than will, the train rushes in an open field", - such words sound in the famous "Passing Song" by Nestor Kukolnik and Mikhail Glinka. There is no mistake: in the first half of the 19th century, self-propelled steam engines in Russia were really called steamships. True, not for long, only three years, but the fact managed to get into the annals of history along with a popular song.
Step 2
For the first miracle machines, the apt name was not immediately found. In official reports and engineering documents, they were called scooter steam engines, steam wagons, even steam carts, carriages and carriages. And the journalists of those years tried to outmaneuver each other in epithets for the invention: sometimes they called them a "wild beast", sometimes they called them an "iron giant."
Step 3
It is clear that the "steamer" carried a more understandable meaning to the layman - a car that "goes ferry". It only remained to change the second root, because the main thing in it is that it is lucky. And so the word "steam locomotive" finally appeared.
Step 4
For the first time it was published in the newspaper "Northern Bee" in 1837: "Here comes a steam locomotive with a chimney from which smoke is blowing; the car drags behind it several carts, which can accommodate more than 300 people, the force is equal to the strength of 40 horses; in one hour it runs space of 30 versts ". So the publisher of the newspaper, Nikolai Grech, is considered the conditional author of the word. In the same year, the new term was used in his report for the Imperial Cabinet by Franz Anton von Gerstner, the builder of the first railway in Russia from Pavlovsk to Tsarskoe Selo. Following the big boss, smaller officials began to use the word, and soon it became familiar to any resident of the country.
Step 5
By the way, despite the invention of the Cherepanovs, cars bought abroad were the first to run on Russian rails. And there they were called locomotives.
