Steam engine inventor12/29/2023 ![]() ![]() It was several years before steam locomotion became commercially viable. Unfortunately for Trevithick, his inventions were a bit ahead of their time as the cast-iron rails were not strong enough to support the weight of his locomotives and kept breaking. In the summer of 1808, he erected a circular railway in Euston Square and charged a one shilling fee for a ride. Trevithick returned to Cornwall and developed a new locomotive he called Catch Me Who Can. The Penydarren locomotive was designed so that the exhaust steam was turned up the chimney, which produced a draft that drew the hot gases from the fire more powerfully through the boiler, a novel engineering principle vital to the success of the high-pressure engine. The locomotive reached speeds of nearly five miles an hour over the nine mile journey, which was completed in 4 hours and 5 minutes. ![]() The locomotive was capable of hauling ten tons of iron, 70 passengers, and five wagons from the ironworks at Penydarren to the Merthyr-Cardiff Canal. Three years later, Trevithick produced the world's first steam engine to run successfully on rails, which he believed would be more effective than horse drawn wagons pulling the heavy loads of coal and iron to and from the mines. Known as the " Puffing Devil," the locomotive was able to keep up the steam pressure for short journeys. ![]() On Christmas Eve in 1801, he unveiled his first high-pressure steam locomotive and took seven friends on a short journey. Trevithick's interests soon turned to designing high-pressure steam engines to power locomotives. His compact engines could be transported in an ordinary farm wagon to the Cornish mines, where they became known as "puffer whims" because they vented their steam into the atmosphere. In 1797, he developed a successful high-pressure engine that was soon in great demand in Cornwall and South Wales for raising the ore and refuse from mines. Trevithick was promoted to engineer of the Ding Dong mine at Penzance. Watt opined that utilization of high pressure steam was too dangerous to be practical. Trevithick thought that utilizing steam at high pressures would enable the engines to be made much more compact and more efficient. Trevithick focused on improving the efficiency of the extremely large, low pressure steam engine invented by James Watt. Because Cornwall had no coalfields, it was expensive to import the coal required for the steam engine and it was important that the engine operated efficiently. With his work in the mines, he learned of the importance of the steam engine for pumping and hoisting the ore from the mine. tall and became known as the "Cornish Giant." He developed an aptitude for math and engineering and was employed as a consulting engineer at the age of 19. ![]() The youngest of six children, Trevithick demonstrated very little interest in school and was characterized by his schoolmaster as being "disobedient, slow and obstinate." He went to work at Wheal Treasury mine where his father was a mining manager. Trevithick was born in the mining district of Cornwall, England in 1771. A controversial and somewhat tragic figure, Richard Trevithick (1771 – 1833) is credited with inventing the first high-pressure steam engine and the first operational steam locomotive at the turn of the 19th century. ![]()
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