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"By the time I can take people out to where Hubble is looking, they won't be human anymore, by a long way."
- Larry Niven

Steam-Propelled Moving Houses  
  Otherwise ordinary residences that move from place to place, powered by steam.  

"Oh! what is that?" cried Edric, without attending to him, as, lost in amazement, he saw a house in the suburbs gently slide out of its place, and glide majestically along the road, a lady at one of the windows kissing her hand to some one in another house as she passed. "Do my eyes deceive me, or does that house move?"

"Certainly it does," replied the doctor. "Did you never see a moving house before? You must have heard of them at any rate, for nothing can be more common. It certainly is convenient, when one wants to go into the country for a few weeks, to be able to take one's house with one: it saves a great deal of trouble in packing, and permits one to have all of one's little conveniences about one. You see that there are grooves in the bottom of the houses that just fit on the iron railways; and as they are propelled by steam, they slide on without much trouble. It does not answer, however, with any but small houses, for large ones can't well be made compact enough.

Technovelgy from The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century, by Jane Webb Loudon.
Published by Henry Colburn in 1828
Additional resources -

Compare to the traction city from Philip Reeve's 2003 novel Mortal Engines.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century
  More Ideas and Technology by Jane Webb Loudon
  Tech news articles related to The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century
  Tech news articles related to works by Jane Webb Loudon

Steam-Propelled Moving Houses-related news articles:
  - Would Movable Houses Make Cities Better?
  - Driverless Hotel Rooms Predicted In 1828
  - Why Not Move A Warehouse District?

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