The Rocket alone met all the requirements and won the prize.

So it happened that George Stephenson came into fame and has ever since lived in popular memory as the father of the locomotive.

There was nothing new in his Rocket, except his own workmanship.

Like Robert Fulton, he appears to have succeeded where others failed because he was a sounder engineer, or a better combiner of sound principles into a working, whole, than any of his rivals.
Across the Atlantic came the news of Stephenson's remarkable success.
And by this time railroads were beginning in various parts of the United States: the Mohawk and Hudson, from Albany to Schenectady; the Baltimore and Ohio; the Charleston and Hamburg in South Carolina; the Camden and Amboy, across New Jersey.

Horses, mules, and even sails, furnished the power for these early railroads.