They were workmen themselves, and they were superior to their subordinates because they were better engineers and better men of business than any other folk who up to that time had undertaken the business of transportation in the United States."* * Abram S.Hewitt.Quoted in Iles, "Leading American Inventors", p.

37.
The youngest of these brothers, Edwin Augustus Stevens, dying in 1868, left a large part of his fortune to found the Stevens Institute of Technology, afterwards erected at Hoboken not far from the old family homestead on Castle Point.

The mechanical star of the family, however, was the second brother, Robert Livingston Stevens, whose many inventions made for the great improvement of transportation both by land and water.
For a quarter of a century, from 1815 to 1840, he was the foremost builder of steamboats in America, and under his hand the steamboat increased amazingly in speed and efficiency.

He made great contributions to the railway.

The first locomotives ran upon wooden stringers plated with strap iron.