By 1840, more than 3,000 miles of track had been laid. By 1860, the year before the Civil War, there were 30,000 miles of track. Traveling by train, at an unbelievable thirty miles an hour, you could go from New York to Chicago in only two days .

It was a head-over-heels affair. It was technology that captured us. We Americans, in the nineteenth century, became fascinated with machines and scientific advances. We fell in love with speed—with locomotives and steamboats and clipper ships. We fell in love with inventions—with John Deere's steel plow, Cyrus McCormick's reaper, Elias Howe's sewing machine , and Samuel Morse's electric telegraph. We fell in love with progress.