The first item on the first page of the very first issue of The Inquirer, 180 years ago, was a notice of steamboat schedules.

The Burlington was leaving at 6 a.m. from Chestnut Street, making stops at Trenton, Princeton and New Brunswick, N.J. By transferring to the Swan, passengers could turn a Philadelphia-to-New York excursion into a lightning-fast 11-hour trip.

The prominent placement seems a mystery. Why would a newspaper waste valuable front-page real estate on ship schedules? And why would anyone buy a paper - an Inquirer subscription cost $8 a year - to obtain that information?

The answer: The steamboat schedule was the crucial news of the day.

In 1829, the great railroads did not yet exist. Of course there were no cars or interstates. Rivers, lakes and seas were the American highways. And if you lived in Philadelphia, the biggest manufacturing hub in the country, knowing precisely when a steamer was coming or going was key to your ability to send and receive goods and visitors.

Then as now, information was money. And reading The Inquirer was a route to both.

Vol. 1, No. 1, of the Pennsylvania Inquirer appeared on the afternoon of June 1, 1829, the city's seventh daily in a brutally competitive media market where newspapers routinely opened, closed, and merged.

The Inquirer - Philadelphia replaced Pennsylvania in 1859 - was owned by two men, one a printer named John Walker. His partner, John Norvell, had left the city's largest paper, the Aurora & Gazette, over an editorial shift that he believed favored the creation of a class system in the United States.

"There can be no better name than 'The Inquirer,' " Norvell is supposed to have said as the first issue appeared. "In a free state, there should always be an inquirer asking on behalf of the people: Why was this done? Why is that man put forward? Why is that law proposed?"

That first issue numbered an unimpressive four pages. Its front page bore six columns, each filled top to bottom with dense gray type. No headlines. No photographs. And, really, no news.

Newspapers were still mostly political or commercial sheets, established to support a candidate, religion or policy. The Civil War, which would transform papers into true news-gathering organizations, was 30 years away. Besides, in 1829 no reputable editor would do something so undignified as to send reporters around town to gather information.

News was what was delivered to the office, which for The Inquirer was at 5 Bank Alley, between Front and Second Streets just south of Walnut.

That first front page carried word that R. Megonegal had opened a penmanship academy at 206 Race St., where he guaranteed students would learn to write "with ease, elegance and dispatch."

A long story on the "Moral Conditions of England" told how the British had departed from a proper frugality to indulge in expensive houses, furniture and clothes - and that Americans were at risk of the same.

The Four Nations Hotel on Coates Street was under new management. Fancy cloth had arrived at the offices of E. Sayres, a draper and tailor at 160 Arch St. The Rev. James Patterson alerted parents that "a very large number of children sicken and die for want of the fresh and healthful air of the country."

He invited sons and daughters to accompany him on a summer sojourn, though there was no word on where he planned to take the children or when they might return.

On the day The Inquirer came into existence, Andrew Jackson was a new president. He'd been inaugurated three months earlier, the victor of the bitter 1828 election where opponents derided him as a "jackass." Jackson responded by adorning his campaign literature with images of a donkey, presaging its role as emblem of the Democratic Party.

Jackson arrived in Washington as a living symbol of the common man, representing the ideal that anyone - that is, any white man - could go as far as his talent could take him.

He had grown up poor, but scrapped to become a lawyer, congressman, senator and military leader, a veteran of the Revolution and hero of the War of 1812. Jackson was no scion of a great family - his fame came from killing Indians and Englishmen.