The Biographical Dictionary of America/Barlow, Thomas Harris

​BARLOW, Thomas Harris, inventor, was born in Nicholas county, Ky., Aug. 5, 1789. He was of limited education. He built a steamboat at Augusta, Tenn., about 1820, and in 1827 constructed a miniature steam locomotive, with car attached, to carry two passengers and with power to ascend a grade of eighty feet to the mile. He operated it in a room on an oval track, the first Western railway train in America. In 1835 he constructed a large locomotive with two upright cylinders and lever beams, both engines attached to one axle with crooks at right angles, and upright boilers. This he expected to run from Lexington to Frankfort, but owing to the peculiar construction of the rails, it was abandoned. In 1845, while teaching his grand-children the motion of the heavenly bodies, he conceived the idea of a small planetarium. After three years of patient labor the instrument was finished, and sold to Girard college, Philadelphia. Others were soon constructed, and one was exhibited at the World's Fair in New York, in 1851, and sold for two thousand dollars. West Point military academy bought one of larger size, as did Annapolis naval academy, and one was sent to New Orleans. It is one of the most exact and remarkable machines ever invented, showing the motions of the solar system, the dates of the eclipses, and of the transit of Mercury and Venus. In 1855 he obtained a patent for a rifled cannon, which, being tested at the Washington navy yard, developed remarkable accuracy and range. Previous to this he invented an automatic nail and tack machine. He died in Cincinnati. O., Feb. 22, 1865.