When Science Fiction was Fact: The New Jersey Steam Man of 1868
Is it a machine? Or is this some kind of human being? Whatever the thing is, it’s moving in slow, lumbering circles around Military Park in Newark, New Jersey, on the morning of January 23, 1868. It has the form of a man, albeit a very large man, standing as it does at over seven feet tall. And it is wearing the elegant clothes of a Victorian Era gentleman complete with a vest, top hat, trousers and polished leather shoes. In fact, it even has a moustache! Yet, as the crowd gathers in the park that morning in Newark to gawk at this futuristic looking spectacle that seems to be moving all on its own, something appears staged, maybe even a little gimmicky about the whole thing. The being is pulling a cart, like a small rickshaw, which it holds in its two lanky long metal arms that hang down at its side, and sitting in that cart is its eccentric inventor, Zadoc P. Dederick. Military Park Newark NJ circa 1900 ...