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When the steam engine tram was first introduced in San Francisco in the 1870s pandemonium prevailed! The horses would panic at the sight of these strange moving objects and trot wildly in mad frenzy, in any direction they fancy!
These metal monsters breathing smoke and making strange noises were not like anything they had seen or known during their life time!
For a while chaos was let loose in the city streets, as the horse drawn vehicles ran amuck whenever a tram came into sight! S. R. Mathewson, an inventor, solved this problem in an ingenious and simple way.
He built the tram in the shape of a horse with a horse’s head and body. The tram could travel at eight miles per hour. It was gas fired, so that the smoke and strange noises were completely removed.
This idea worked very well and soon order was restored in the streets.