The Steam Man of the Prairies

Edward S. Ellis, in 1865, wrote about a prodigy that constructed a nonsentient automaton called the Steam Man. At the time, it was considered to be nothing more than an elaborate novelty item, like Boilerplate. Stories of its feats were relegated to the tabloids and "Edisonades." In the account entitled Steam Man of the Prairies (the first of several such publications), Johnny Brainerd, a teenage dwarf, invented "a man that shall go by steam."