| Richard Trevithick |
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| 1771 births | |
| 1833 deaths | |
| cornish inventors | |
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| people from cornwall | |
| british inventors | |
| locomotive designers---builders | |
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Richard Trevithick (born 13 April 1771 in Illogan , Cornwall ; died 22 April 1833 in Dartford , Kent ) was a British Inventor , Engineer and builder of the first working Steam Locomotive . Trevithick was the son of a mine engineer and as a child would watch , the steam carriage pioneer, and would have been influenced by his experiments with steam powered Road Locomotion --> Until that time, steam engines were of the condensing type, for which James Watt held a number of patents, for which other manufacturers were anxious to evade royalties. This type of engine condensed low pressure steam to produce a vacuum in the cylinder and move the piston. As an adult, he realised that improvements in Boiler technology now permitted the safe production of high pressure steam, and that this could be made to move a piston on its own account. He was not the first to think of so-called "strong steam", but he was the first to make it work, in 1799 . This eliminated the condenser and allowed the use of a smaller cylinder. His engine could be more compact, small enough, as he realised, to power a carriage. (Note this did not use the ''expansion'' of the steam, so-called "expansive working" came later). In 1801 , he put one of his new compact steam engines on wheels. This "road locomotive", which became known as the ''Puffing Devil'', was one of the world's first road Vehicle s to carry passengers as well as move under its own power and thus was an early forerunner of the Automobile . Trevithick first demonstrated it in public on Christmas Eve 1801 (his cousin Andrew Vivian at the controls) by having it take friends on short trips through the streets of Camborne . A few days later Trevithick used it to take himself and some friends to a Pub , but, having left the boiler fire burning whilst they went inside, they emerged to find it a smoking wreck. Trevithick's ''Puffing Devil'' was unable to maintain sufficient steam pressure for long periods, so would be of little practical use. In 1803 he built another early self-propelled road vehicle, a Stagecoach fitted with a steam engine called the ''London Steam Carriage'', which attracted much attention from the public and press when he drove it that year in London from Holborn to Paddington and back. However, it proved more expensive to run than a conventional horse-drawn carriage and so was abandoned. Anxious to prove his ideas, he built a stationary engine at the Colbrookdale Company's works in 1802 , forcing water to a measured height to measure the work done. The engine ran at forty piston strokes a minute, with an uprecedented boiler pressure of 145psi. The company then built a rail locomotive for him, but little is known about it, including whether or not it actually ran. To date the only known information about it comes from a drawing preserved at the Science Museum, London , and a letter written by Trevithick to his friend, D. Giddy. This is the drawing used as the basis of all images and replicas of the later Pen-y-Darren locomotive, as no plans for that locomotive have survived. , Shropshire .]] In 1804 , Trevithick built the world's first Railway steam Locomotive . This resulted from a bet made by Samuel Homfray , a South Wales ironmaster, that a steam engine could run on a tramway and pull a train of wagons of a specified weight a certain distance. It ran on the Merthyr Tramroad at the Pen-y-Darren Ironworks near Merthyr Tydfil in Wales , and proved that it could pull at least ten Tonne s of iron and the best part of one-hundred men at speeds of around 5 Mph (8 Km/h ). It first ran on 21 February 1804 , successfully travelling the nine miles from Pen-y-Darren to Abercynon . Although it worked, it was too heavy for the rails on which it ran – they had, after all, been designed for horse-drawn trains – and it kept breaking them. It was therefore taken out of service soon after its maiden journey. Homfray was pleased enough. He had won his bet, and the locomotive was placed on blocks to work as a Stationary Engine . The locomotive itself was of a very primitive design. It comprised a Boiler mounted upon a four wheel frame. At one end, a Cylinder was mounted partly in the boiler, and a Piston Rod ran out along a Crosshead , an arrangement that looked like a giant trombone. As there was only one Power Stroke , this was coupled to a giant Flywheel mounted on one side. This would even out the movement that was transmitted to a central Cog Wheel that was, in turn connected to the driving wheel. In addition to steam engines and locomotives, Trevithick also built Steamboat s, River Dredger s and Threshing Machine s. However, despite Publicity Stunt s such as running a steam locomotive called ''Catch Me Who Can'', built for him by Hazeldine and Rastrick at Bridgnorth , on a circular track in London , Trevithick found it difficult to persuade Investor s to fund his projects. In 1816 he travelled to Peru to work as a mine and locomotive engineer, but, although initially he was successful, civil war broke out in 1826 and he was eventually forced to return to Britain penniless. Despite his inventive Genius and pioneering achievements, Trevithick died of pneumonia in 1833, in poverty and obscurity, largely unrecognised. One of his four sons, Francis, became Locomotive Superintendent of the Northern division of the London And North Western Railway . REFERENCE Lowe, J.W., (1989) ''British Steam Locomotive Builders,'' Guild Publishing SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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