
Many of the earliest locomotives for American railroads were imported from Great Britain, including first the Stourbridge Lion and later the John Bull (still the oldest operable engine-powered vehicle in the United States of any kind, as of 1981). However, a domestic locomotive-manufacturing industry was quickly established. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Tom Thumb in 1830, designed and built by Peter Cooper, was the first US-built locomotive to run in America, although it was intended as a demonstration of the potential of steam traction, rather than as a revenue-earning locomotive. The DeWitt Clinton was also built in the 1830s.