Robert L. Stevens

Robert Livingston Stevens ( * 1778 in Hoboken, New Jersey, † 1856 ) was an American engineer and designer of his skills especially devoted to the railway system, steam ships and ferry boats. He was the son of Colonel John Stevens and President of the Camden and Amboy Railroad and developer of Breitfußschiene. His brother John Cox Stevens was a businessman and first Commodore of the New York Yacht Club.

Services

Stevens developed 1830/31 from the fungus rail statically favorable Breitfußschiene. The Breitfußschiene is characterized by a wide foot, on which sits a narrow web and about the rail head.

The track was first used in 1832 on the Camden and Amboy Railroad in New Jersey on the main line and in a stronger version on the branch line. The first flat-bottom rails still had built an asymmetrical head design with a 1:20 sloped profile, later one has symmetrical rails and simply tilted the whole rail.

Other inventions by Stevens were the bar bolts and connecting plates and numerous improvements of steamships.

Stevens brought the locomotive built by Stephenson John Bull of England as the first commercially usable locomotive in the U.S., where it was assembled by his chief engineer Isaac Dripps and equipped with a cow catcher.

Langer's Camden and Amboy Railroad was indispensable in the American Civil War for supply and troop transport. In 1871 it was taken over by the Pennsylvania Railroad. Together with his brother Edwin Augustus 1844 he constructed the first armored ship for the U.S. Navy, the Stevens Battery.