Logically, it would make more sense if railroads were developed after steam power made possible the locomotive. In fact, it happened in reverse: in South Wales, Britain, the first rail line was developed from mines to a port with cargo ships. But the Swansea and Mumbles Railway was horse-powered, as were other early ones all over England. By the middle of the 1800s, horse-drawn street cars moved across the ocean to the United States.

On this day, November 14, in 1832, the first tram car in the United States, built by engineer John Stephenson at the request of a wealthy banker named John Mason, led an inaugural trip across the Bowery on the newly-opened New York and Harlem Railroad.

This was the advent of public transportation in Europe and the U.S.: while stagecoaches for hire had been around for a century to take people wherever they wished, these horse-powered omnibuses ran on predetermined routes at regular intervals. Soon after New York opened their lines, New Orleans created their own; and while the former had moved their rail underground to conserve space, New Orleans then began operating the oldest street car system in the United States.