John Stevens of New York and Hoboken had set up a machine shop that was to mean much to mechanical progress in America.

Oliver Evans, a mechanical genius of Delaware, was dreaming of the application of high-pressure steam to both road and water carriages.

Such manifestations, though still very faint, were to Franklin the signs of a new era.
And so, with vision undimmed, America's most famous citizen lived on until near the end of the first year of George Washington's administration.

On April 17, 1790, his unconquerable spirit took its flight.
In that year, 1790, was taken the First Census of the United States.
The new nation had a population of about four million people.

It then included practically the present territory east of the Mississippi, except the Floridas, which belonged to Spain.