INVENTORS and Engineers Richard Trevithick (1771-1833)
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INVENTORS AND Engineers Richard Trevithick (1771-1833) Richard Trevithick was an inventor and mining engineer from Cornwall. He was born on 13th April, 1771, the son of a mining “captain” and a miner’s daughter. At this point, Cornwall was the mining centre of Britain and Trevithick, from a very early age, took an interest in mining and engineering. The second youngest in a family of six he soon stood out from others because of his height (6ft 2 in), which was exceptional for the era. He did poorly at the local village school at Camborne, though showed a talent for arithmetic over all other academic subjects. At the age of 19 he began working with his father at, firstly, East Stray Park Mine, then Wheal Treasury Mine, and in his job he developed an interest in the mechanics of steam power after becoming something of an authority on the repair of the existing mine steam engines. He began work at Ding Dong Colliery in 17?? as its engineer and it was here that he first began to translate his interest in steam power into tangible results. His first experiments involved making a model steam engine, powered by a red-hot poker, which, when inserted into a tube under a boiler, heated the water and produced steam which then moved the engine for a short period. Trevithick’s first full-sized steam engine appeared on Christmas Eve 1801. It was named “Puffing Devil” and it was a road locomotive which was capable of carrying passengers. On its first outing it successfully carried 6 passengers some distance along the road in Camborne. Unfortunately, just three days later it broke down during further tests. When Trevithick and his colleagues adjourned to a nearby pub for refreshments they unwisely forgot to extinguish the engine’s fire. The boiler dried up and the locomotive burst into flames! Trevithick, however, did not consider this a huge loss as the locomotive would have only been able to sustain sufficient steam pressure for a very short while and so would not have been of great practical value. His 1803 London Steam Carriage was abandoned because it was too expensive to run and also very uncomfortable, but it did succeed in carrying passengers from Holborn to Paddington. The difference between Trevithick’s approach to steam power and those that had gone before was his use of high pressure steam, which was dismissed as far too dangerous by those such as James Watt, who, along with Matthew Boulton, had become considerably rich by patenting their design of low pressure steam engine. Trevithick spent much of his career struggling against the restrictions of Watt’s patent and the limitations of the technology, producing designs which were ahead of their time. His locomotives, include the 1804 “Pen-y-darren”, which is believed to be the first steam locomotive worked on a track. This engine hauled 10 tons of iron and numerous passengers along rails at Merthyr in Wales. A subsequent loco was built for Wylam Colliery, again in 1804 and using wooden rails. In 1808 “Catch Me Who Can” carried fare-paying passengers around a circle of track in Bloomsbury, London, but like all of Trevithick’s locomotives, suffered from an excess of weight, which caused the brittle cast iron rails to break. This was to be a major stumbling block in the development of successful steam traction until George Stephenson’s use of much stronger wrought iron rails in the 1820s. Trevithick experimented with further high pressure steam designs though none were for locomotives. He travelled to South America in 1816, where his engines were being used to help drain water from the Peruvian silver mines. Here he acted as a mining consultant and went through numerous hair-raising adventures before meeting up with fellow engineer Robert Stephenson, who had himself been working in Colombia. The penniless Trevithick was given by Stephenson the £50 passage back to Britain and returned with little more than the clothes he was wearing. Trevithick died in Dartford, Kent on 22nd April 1833. He left no money and his funeral expenses had to be paid by the workers at the works where he had been developing a reaction turbine for a ship. THE MUSEUM OF SCOTTISH RAILWAYS Inventors & Engineers Activity & Information Sheets INVENTORS and ENGINEERS Thomas Telford (1757-1834) Thomas Telford was born in Dumfriesshire, Scotland on August 9th, 1757. The the son of a shepherd, Telford went on to become one of Scotland’s most celebrated civil engineers. Such was his reputation that he was nicknamed “The Colossus of Roads” and many of his most famous projects still exist to this day. Beginning as an apprentice stonemason in the Scottish Borders, he then worked for a time in Edinburgh, before moving to London in 1782, where one of his first tasks was to build additions to Somerset House. Work at Portsmouth dockyard followed and by 1787, despite being largely self-taught, he had become Surveyor of Public works for Shropshire with bridge building and repairs being a particular responsibility. Telford’s growing reputation was enhanced by several highly successful canal projects, including the construction of the Caledonian Canal in Scotland’s Great Glen from 1801 onwards. Part of this saw a series of 8 locks being built just north of Fort William, known as “Neptune’s Staircase”, allowing the canal to cross a rise in the land level of some 64 feet (24m). This was only one part of a master plan by Telford to improve communications in the Scottish Highlands, which was to last for over 20 years. It would include re-designing some parts of the Crinan Canal, building around 920 miles (1,480km) of new roads, as well as constructing over 1000 new bridges. In addition to this, some 32 new churches, to a standard Telford design, were built as part of a project to build churches in communities which had no existing church buildings. One of Telford’s most famous projects was the suspension bridge over the Menai Straits in Anglesey, linking that island with the mainland. At the time it was the longest suspension bridge in the world, spanning some 580 feet (180m). Although not a railway engineer, many of the techniques which Telford employed would be adapted and developed by others to help facilitate the incredible expansion of the railways which occurred largely after Telford’s death on 2nd September1834. He was one of the first civil engineers to stringently test the materials which he used in his projects, and the result was projects which have stood the test of time. The town of Telford in Shropshire is named after him, as is Telford College in Edinburgh (now part of Edinburgh College). THE MUSEUM OF SCOTTISH RAILWAYS Inventors & Engineers Activity & Information Sheets INVENTORS and ENGINEERS George Stephenson (1781-1848) George Stephenson was born on June 9th, 1781 in a small village just 9 miles west of Newcastle Upon Tyne. Neither of his parents could read or write and neither could Stephenson himself until he was 18. Becoming an engineman at a coal mine at Newburn at the age of 17, he paid to study reading, writing and arithmetic at night school. Stephenson settled at Killingworth Colliery as a brakesman, gaining promotion to enginewright after he was able to fix the pit pumping engine. With responsibility for maintaining all of the colliery engines he soon became an expert in steam driven machinery. He devised a form of safety lamp at more or less the same time as Humphrey Davy, with Davy’s design being preferred by the powers in London, who could not understand how an “uneducated” man from “The North” was capable of such brilliance. Stephenson’s lowly beginnings would affect his future relationships with the authorities. It was only a matter of time before Stephenson would turn his attention to the challenges of producing a successful steam driven locomotive. By 1814 he had designed his first engine, which would be used to haul coal at Killingworth Pit. Among his earliest designs was a six wheeled locomotive which was used on the Kilmarnock and Troon Railway in Scotland, but ultimately proved to be too heavy for the brittle cast iron rails. In 1821 construction began on the Stockton and Darlington Railway, with locomotives designed by Stephenson and his son Robert, a rising star whose company was tasked with building the machines required. The railway opened on 27th September 1825, with the engine “Locomotion” hauling an 80 ton load for 9 miles (15 km) at a maximum speed of 24 mph (39 km/h). After the success of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, Stephenson’s next challenge was to construct a railway between Liverpool and Manchester. After much argument over whose land the line was to travel, a route was agreed, and construction begun, with Stephenson having had to overcome some formidable natural obstacles in a bid to keep the line as level as possible (steam engines lose a lot of their power on even gentle inclines). The foremost of these was Chat Moss, a seemingly bottomless peat bog, which was bridged by literally having the line floated over it on rafts constructed of heather and branches. Much of the credit for the design of the locomotives used on the Liverpool and Manchester, including the world-famous “Rocket” must go to his son Robert, but it is true that the design of the line itself and its civil engineering marvels were of George’s making. He remained busy for the rest of his life working on various projects, including the railway lines from Derby to Leeds and Manchester to Leeds, as well as becoming the first president of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in 1847.