In the 1840s, a self-made Philadelphia engineer named Joseph Harrison Jr. oversaw the constructon of a 400-mile long railroad between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Harrison had made his name for himself as the inventor of system that allowed locomotives to have 4 driving wheels rather than 2. His foreign client was the richest, most powerful, and feared man in Europe: Czar Nicholas I of Russia. What could be more incongrous than American drive and Russian “Oblomovitis”? Harrison and the Czar formed an unlikely friendship, and the American would return to the Quaker City to built a palace fit for a grand duke.
The Autocrat and the Engineer