Part 8

An English gentleman of fortune, and much interested in mechanics, Richard Lovell Edgeworth was influenced by Dr. Erasmus Darwin to take up the subject of steam locomotion. In 1768, Dr. Small, in correspondence with James Watt, spoke of Edgeworth and his experiments in the problem of moving land and water carriages by steam. Two years later Edgeworth patented a portable railway system and then spent nearly forty years on that one idea.

When an old man of seventy, Edgeworth wrote to James Watt: "I have always thought that steam would become the universal lord, and that in time we should scorn the post horses." Dr. Smiles says: "Four years later he died, and left the problem which he had nearly all his life been trying ineffectually to solve, to be worked out by younger men."

FRANCIS MOORE

In 1769, Francis Moore, of London, a linen draper, invented a machine which he described as made of wood, iron, brass, copper, or other metals, and constructed upon peculiar principles, and capable of being wrought or put in motion by fire, water, or air, without being drawn by horses or any other beast or cattle; and which machines, or engines, upon repeated trials, he has discovered would be very useful in agriculture, carriage of persons and goods, either in coaches, chariots, chaises, carts, wagons, or other conveyances, and likewise in navigation, by causing ships, boats, barges, and other vessels to move, sail, or proceed, with more swiftness or despatch.

It was said that, so confident was the inventor of the success of his machine, he sold all his own horses, and by his advice many of his friends did the same, expecting that the price of that animal would be so affected by the invention, that it would not be again one-fourth of what it was then. Moore made several trials with his steam carriage, and took out three patents for it. Like many others of that time, however, Moore's carriages never got into use.

PLANTA

A Swiss army officer who was contemporary with Cugnot in the seventeenth century. He was engaged upon the problem of a steam road wagon at about the same time that Cugnot conceived and executed his vehicle in 1769. General Gribeauval, to whom Cugnot's plan had been referred, engaged Planta to pass upon it and to examine the new vehicle. The Swiss officer found it in all respects so much better than his own that he so reported to the French Ministry of War and abandoned further endeavors on that line.

J. S. KESTLER

In 1680 a description was published of a carriage designed by J. S. Kestler. This was merely a toy, set in motion by mercury in a tube heated by a candle.

BLANCHARD

In connection with his partner, Masurier, Blanchard brought out in Paris, in 1779, a vehicle that was somewhat patterned after the man-propelled carriage of Elié Richard. It was very successful and attracted a great deal of attention.

THOMAS CHARLES AUGUSTE DALLERY

Born at Amiens, France, September 4, 1754. Died at Jouy, near Versailles, in June, 1835.

About 1780, Dallery made a steam vehicle with a multi-tubular boiler which he claimed was an original invention of his own. This vehicle was run in Amiens and in 1790 was seen on the streets of Paris. In March, 1803, he secured a patent on the tubular boiler for use on his steamboat, or on his steam carriage. This vehicle was a boat-shaped wagon, driven by a steam engine.

JAMES WATT

Born at Greenock, Scotland, January 19, 1736. Died at Birmingham, Staffordshire, England, August 25, 1819.

Watt came of a respectable and industrious family. His grandfather was a professor of mathematics, while his father was an instrument maker, councillor and manufacturer. After a limited education young Watt went to London, in 1755, and became a mathematical and nautical instrument maker. In that capacity he became connected with Glasgow University, and there made his discoveries that resulted in the practical improvements in the steam engine which made him famous. He was associated with Matthew Boulton, under the firm name of Boulton & Watt, from 1774 to 1800, and the Watt engines that were built by that concern at Soho revolutionized England's mining industries. His steam engines represented a great step beyond the Newcomen engines, though still using low-pressure steam.

Watt's connection with steam carriages for use on the common roads, a subject that was of much moment in his day, was limited to a single patent and generally to discouraging the plans of others in that direction, owing to his fear that the introduction of high-pressure steam use would harm the engine business. In the patent granted to him in 1784 he proposed that the boiler of his carriage should be made of wooden staves, fastened with iron hoops, like a cask, and the furnace to be of iron, and placed in the inside of the boiler, surrounded with water.

Watt, however, never built the steam carriage. He retained the deepest prejudices against the use of high-pressure steam, saying: "I soon relinquished the idea of constructing an engine on this principle; from being sensible it would be liable to some of the objections against Savery's engine, viz., the danger of bursting the boiler, and also that a great part of the power of the steam would be lost, because no vacuum was formed to assist the descent of the piston."

ROBERT FOURNESS

Born in Otley, Yorkshire, England. Died at an early age.

Fourness became a practical engineer and invented several labor-saving machines. One of his first inventions was for a machine to split hides, that was set up and operated in the establishment of his father. Later in life he established works for himself in Sheffield, and afterwards in Gainsborough. In 1788, he was a resident of Elland, Halifax, and there made a steam carriage that was run by a three-cylinder inverted engine. Spur-gearing transmitted the driving power from the crank shaft to the axle. His patent was taken out in conjunction with James Ashworth. This vehicle was mounted on two driving wheels and had a smaller steering wheel in front.

GEORGE MEDHURST

Born at Shoreham, Kent, England, in February, 1759. Died in September, 1827.

Medhurst was educated as a clock maker, but in 1789 started as an engineer. In the same year he secured a patent for a windmill and pumps for compressing air to obtain motive power. One of the first investigators in this direction, the idea on which he worked and which continued to absorb his energy throughout life, was to make use of the wind when it served in order to compress large bodies of air for use when needed. In 1800, he took out a patent on an aeolian engine and demonstrated how carriages could be driven upon the common roads by compressed air stored in reservoirs underneath the body of the vehicle. He also contemplated applying this engine to other useful purposes and calculated that small carriages could be worked by a rotary engine and larger ones by reciprocating engines with special gear for varying power.

In describing his inventions and explaining his ideas regarding compressed air, Medhurst said: "The power applied to the machinery is compressed air, and the power to compress the air I obtain generally by wind, assisted and improved by machinery described in this specification, and in order to render my invention universally useful I propose to adapt my machinery and magazine so that it may be charged by hand, by a fall of water, by a vacuum obtained by wind and also by explosive and effervescent substances, for the rapid conveyance of passengers, mails, dispatches, artillery, military stores, etc., and to establish regular stage coaches and wagons throughout the kingdom, to convey goods and passengers, for public accommodation, by erecting windmills, water-mills, etc., at proper intervals upon the roads, to be employed in charging large magazines at these stations with compressed air, or in raising large magazines of water by wind, etc., by the power of which portable magazines may be charged when required by machinery for that purpose."

Medhurst contemplated establishing regular lines of coaches, with pumping stations at regular stopping places. He endeavored to form a company to work his inventions and develop his plans and published a pamphlet on the subject of compressed air. About 1800, he established himself as a machinist and ironmaster in Denmark street, Soho, and about ten years later was the first to suggest pneumatic tubes for the carriage of parcels or passengers. Some two years later he brought out the proposition for what has come to be known as the atmospheric railway, an appliance for conveying goods and passengers by the power of a piston in a continuous tube laid between the rails.

ANDREW VIVIAN

A resident of Cornwall, England, Andrew Vivian, a cousin of Richard Trevithick, became much interested in the engineering experiments of his famous relative. He worked with his cousin and particularly assisted him in experiments on steam engines for propelling road carriages. In 1802, he was a joint patentee with Trevithick, in the early steam vehicle that was taken to London and was exhibited in that city, where for a short time it occasioned a great deal of public curiosity.

DU QUET

A Frenchman who, in 1714, designed a small windmill to give motion to the wheels of his carriages.

J. H. GENEVOIS

A Swiss clergyman, of the early part of the eighteenth century. He proposed to use windmills or sails on his wagon and by a system of springs to store the energy thus obtained until such time as it should be needed for driving purposes.

JOHN DUMBELL

In 1808, John Dumbell secured a patent for an engine that had many peculiar features. He planned to have the steam act on a series of vanes, or fliers, within a cylinder, "like the sails of a windmill," causing them to rotate together with the shaft to which they were fixed. Gearing transmitted the motion of this shaft to the driving wheels. The inventor proposed to raise steam by permitting water to drop upon a metal plate, kept at an intense heat by means of a strong fire, which was stimulated by a pair of bellows.

WILLIAM BRUNTON

Born at Dalkeith, Scotland, May 26, 1777. Died at Camborne, Cornwall, England, October 5, 1857.

The eldest son of Robert Brunton, a watch and clock maker, William Brunton studied mechanics first in his father's shop and then in England, under the guidance of his grandfather, who was a colliery viewer. When he was thirteen years of age, in 1790, he began work in the fitting shops of the New Lanark cotton mills of David Dale and Richard Arkwright. Remaining in that establishment for six years he then went to the Boulton & Watt shops, at Soho, where he was gradually promoted, until he finally became the foreman and superintendent of engine manufacturing.

In 1813, he went to the Jessop's Butterley Works, but remained there only three years, when he became a partner and mechanical manager of the Eagle Foundry, at Birmingham, a connection that he maintained for ten years. From 1825 to 1835, he was engaged in the practice of civil engineering in London. In the last-mentioned year, he became a share owner in the Cwm Avom tin works in Glamorganshire, Wales, where he superintended the erection of copper-smelting furnaces and rolling mills. He was also connected with the Maesteg Works in the same county and a brewery at Neath. Through the failure of these enterprises he lost the savings of his lifetime and was never again engaged actively in business. He invented many ingenious modes of reducing and manufacturing metals; made some of the original engines used on the Humber and the Trent and also some of the earliest that were seen on the Mersey, including those four vessels first operated on the Liverpool ferries in 1814. He also invented the calciner that was put in use in the tin mines at Cornwall and the silver ore works in Mexico.

Like nearly all the other engineers of his day, Brunton planned a steam carriage. This was built when he was at the Butterley Works, in 1813, and was called "the mechanical traveller." Although a peculiar machine it worked with some degree of success, at a gradient of one in thirty-six, all the winter of 1814, at the Newbottle Colliery. The machine was a steam horse rather than a steam carriage. It consisted of a curious combination of levers, the action of which nearly resembled that of the legs of a man in walking, with feet alternately made to press against the ground of the road or railway, and in such a manner as to adapt themselves to the various inclinations or inequalities of the surface. The feet were of various forms, the great object being to prevent them from injuring the road, and to obtain a firm footing, so that no jerks should take place at the return of the stroke, when the action of the engine came upon them; for this purpose they were made broad, with short spikes to lay hold of the ground. The boiler was a cylinder of wrought iron, five feet six inches long, three feet in diameter, and of such strength as to be capable of sustaining a pressure of upwards of four hundred pounds per square inch. The working cylinder was six inches in diameter, and the piston had a stroke of twenty-four inches; the step of the feet was twenty-six inches, and the whole machine, including water, weighed about forty-five hundredweight. In 1815, the engine of this carriage exploded and killed thirteen persons.

THOMAS TINDALL

A steam engine was patented, in 1814, by Thomas Tindall, of Scarborough. The inventor proposed to use this for an infinitude of purposes, such as driving carriages for the conveyance of passengers, ploughing land, mowing grass and corn, or working thrashing machines. The carriage had three wheels--one for steering. The steam engine drove, by spur gearing, four legs, which, pushing against the ground, moved the carriage. The engine could also be made to act upon the two hind wheels for ascending hills, or for drawing heavy loads. A windmill, driven partly by the action of the wind, and partly by the exhaust steam from the engine, was used as adjunct power.

JOHN BAYNES

A very ingenious modification of William Brunton's mechanical traveler, was the subject of a patent granted to John Baynes, a cutler, of Sheffield, England, in September, 1819. The mechanism was designed to be attached to carriages for the purpose of giving them motion by means of manual labor, or by other suitable power, and consisted of a peculiar combination of levers and rods. The patentee also stated that there might be several sets of the machinery above described for working each set with a treadle, or even only one set and treadle. Then he added: "I prefer two for ordinary purposes, particularly when only a single person is intended to be conveyed in the carriage, who may work the same by placing one foot on each treadle, in which the action will be alternate. The lower parts of the leg should be so formed or shod as not to slip upon the ground. This machinery may be variously applied to carriages, according to circumstances, so as that the treadles may be worked either behind or before the carriage, still producing a forward motion; in some cases it may be advantageous to joint the front end of the treadles to the carriage and press the feet on the hind ends."

JULIUS GRIFFITHS

Among those who came to the front with plans for steam carriages for the public highways, soon after the roads began to be improved, was Julius Griffiths, of Brompton Crescent. In 1821, he patented a steam carriage that was built by Joseph Bramhah, a celebrated engineer and manufacturer. It is said that part of the mechanism was designed by Arzberger, a foreigner.

The carriage has been termed by some English authorities "the first steam coach constructed in this country, expressly for the conveyance of passengers on common roads." It was repeatedly tested during a period of three or four years, but failed on account of boiler deficiencies. Alexander Gordon said of it: "The engines, pumps, and connections were all in the best style of mechanical execution, and had Mr. Griffiths' boiler been of such a kind as to generate regularly the required quantity of steam, a perfect steam carriage must have been the consequence." The carriage moved easily and answered very readily to guidance. The vehicle was a double coach and could carry eight passengers.

This locomotive had two vertical working steam cylinders, which with the boiler, condenser, and other details were suspended to a wood frame at the rear of the carriage. The engineer was seated behind and did his own firing. The boiler was a series of horizontal water tubes, one and one-half inches in diameter and two feet long; at each end the flanges were bolted to the vertical tubes forming the sides of the furnace. Attached to the wood frame in front of the driving wheels, was a small water tank, and a force pump supplied the boiler with water. The steam, passing through the cylinder, went into an air condenser. The power of the engines was communicated from the piston rods to the driving wheels of the carriage by sweep rods, the lower ends of which were provided with driving pinions and detents, which operated upon toothed gear fixed to the hind carriage axle. The object of this mechanism was to keep the driving pinions always in gear with the toothed wheels, however the engine and other machinery might vibrate or the wheels be jolted upon uneven ground. The boiler, engine, and other working parts were suspended to the wood frame by chain slings, having strong spiral springs so as to reduce the vibration from rough roads.

EDMUND CARTWRIGHT

Born at Marnham, Nottinghamshire, England, April 24, 1743. Died at Hastings, October 30, 1823.

Cartwright was educated at Oxford and secured a living in the English church. He devoted himself to the ministry and to literature until 1784, when he became interested in machinery and in the following year invented the power loom. He took out other patents and also gave some attention to devising a mechanical carriage propelled by man power. In 1822, he made a vehicle that was moved by a pair of treadles and cranks worked by the driver.

Even the steam engine engaged his attention. Some improvements which he proposed in it are recorded in works on mechanics. While residing at Eltham, in Lincolnshire, he used frequently to tell his son that, if he lived to be a man, he would see both ships and land-carriages impelled by steam. At that early period he constructed a model of a steam engine attached to a barge, which he explained, about the year 1793, to Robert Fulton. It appears that even in his old age, only a year before his death, he was actively engaged in endeavoring to contrive a plan of propelling land-carriages by steam.

T. BURTSALL

An engineer, of Edinburgh, Scotland, T. Burtsall, in conjunction with J. Hill, of London, got out, in 1824, a patent for flash or instantaneous generation boilers. His aim was to make the metal of the boiler store heat instead of a mass of water, and he accomplished this by heating the boiler to anywhere from two hundred and fifty degrees to six hundred degrees Fahrenheit, keeping the water in a separate vessel and pumping it into the boiler as steam was required. A coach that he built to run with this boiler weighed eight tons, and it was a failure, simply because the boiler could not make steam fast enough.

T. W. PARKER

A working model of a light steam carriage was made by T. W. Parker, of Illinois, in 1825. Three wheels supported the carriage, the two hind wheels being eight feet in diameter. The double-cylinder engine was used.

GEORGE POCOCK

One of the most curious of the wind vehicle productions that held the fancy of scientists to a slight extent in the early part of the nineteenth century was the charvolant or kite carriage that was devised by George Pocock in 1826, and built by Pocock and his partner, Colonel Viney. This was a very light one-seated carriage, drawn by a string of kites harnessed tandem. With a good wind these kites developed great power and it is said that the carriage whirled along, even on heavy roads, at the rate of a mile in three or even two and one-half minutes. Once Viney and Pocock made the trip from Bristol to London, and they often ran their carriage around Hyde Park and the suburbs of London. As the wind could not always be depended upon the charvolant was provided with a rear platform, upon which a pony was carried for emergencies.

SAMUEL BROWN

In 1826, Samuel Brown applied his gas-vacuum engine to the propulsion of a carriage, which was effectively worked along the public roads in England. It even ascended the very steep acclivity of Shooter's Hill, in Kent, to the astonishment of numerous spectators. The expense of working this machine was, however, said far to exceed that of steam, and this formed a barrier to its introduction. Experiments with this engine for the propulsion of vessels on canals or rivers were also made by the Canal Gas Engine Company. Brown patented a locomotive for common roads in 1823.

JAMES NEVILLE

In January, 1827, James Neville, an engineer of London, took out a patent for a "new-invented improved carriage," to be worked by steam, the chief object of which appears to have been to provide wheels adapted to take a firm hold of the ground. He proposed to make each of the spokes of the wheels by means of two rods of iron, coming nearly together at the nave, but diverging considerably apart to their other ends, where they were fastened to an iron felly-ring of the breadth of the tire, and this tire was to be so provided with numerous pointed studs about half an inch long as to stick into the ground to prevent the wheel from slipping round. A second method of preventing this effect was to fasten upon the tire a series of flat springing plates, each of them forming a tangent to the circumference, so that as the wheels rolled forward each plate should be bent against the tire and recover its tangential position as it left the ground in its revolution. It was considered that the increased bearing surface of the plate, and the resistance of its farthest edge, would infallibly prevent slipping. For propelling the carriage Neville proposed to use a horizontal vibrating cylinder to give motion direct to the crank axis by means of the compound motion of the piston rod, as invented by Trevithick, the motion to the running wheels to be communicated through gear of different velocities.

T. S. HOLLAND

Among the singular propositions for producing a locomotive action that were brought out early in the eighteenth century was that invented by T. S. Holland, of London, for which he took out a patent in December, 1827. The invention consisted in the application of an arrangement of levers, similar to that commonly known by the name of lazy-tongs, for the purpose of propelling carriages. The objects appeared to be to derive from the reciprocating motion of a short lever a considerable degree of speed, and to obtain an abutment against which the propellers should act horizontally, in the direction of the motion of the carriage, instead of obliquely to that motion, as is the case when carriages are impelled by levers striking the earth.

JAMES NASMYTH

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, August 19, 1808. Died in South Kensington, England, May 6, 1890.

While yet in his teens James Nasmyth showed great mechanical ability and constructed a small steam engine. In 1821, he became a student at the Edinburgh School of Arts. Six years later he had made a very substantial advance in his experiments. The story of what he endeavored to accomplish is best told by himself. In later life he wrote: