Richard Trevithick: Getting Steamy in Cornwall

In The Emperor’s Aeronaut, the character of Loveday Penhale gained some of her knowledge of steam engines from the great Richard Trevithick, a Cornwall native like her. While he doesn’t appear in the book, he was a real-life engineer whose works astonished everyone around him.

As someone with two people with Attention Deficit Disorder in her household (and a profound love for both of them), I can recognize the traits in Richard. One of his biographers called him quick-tempered and impulsive. His teachers called him slow, obstinate, and very inattentive, but he excelled at math. Though it was said he had enthusiasm, his father considered him a loafer. Like father and maternal grandfather, he began working in the tin and copper mines in Cornwall when he was nineteen, but as an engineer, not a miner.

He was simply fascinated by steam power.

Steam engines were already being built when Richard entered the field, but they were low-pressure, often massive, and generally took their own sweet time getting anything done. Other inventors shied away from the potential danger of a high-pressure engine, but not Richard. He kept tinkering until around 1800, he developed the first high-pressure steam engine. He would go on to use it for railway locomotives, an iron-rolling mill, a paddle-wheel barge, steam carriages (yes, he had the first two in the world), steam dredgers, and threshing machine.

He even had the idea for a “steam circus” in London and set up his Catch-Me-Who-Can, a locomotive that ran on a circular track. It was the first locomotive to haul fare-paying passengers, at a shilling a ride, but the soft ground proved incompatible with the engine’s weight, and he had to abandon the scheme.

Though he married at age 26 and had six children, it was his love for inventing that drove him. In 1814, Peruvian silver mines ordered nine of his engines. By 1816, he was off he went to see the New World. Few knew what had happened to him. Sadly, when he returned to England in 1827, he had lost what fortune he’d found. He died in 1833 in Kent.

But his legacy inspired other engineers to continue advancing the steam engine, fueling the Industrial Revolution around the world.

Retro blast: Ackermann Goes Steampunk!

This week's blast from the past is a steam-powered one...enjoy!

I’ve posted some examples of unusual furniture from prints published in Ackermann’s Repository before, but I thought these prints were especially interesting. Yes, they’re early 19th century wheelchairs!

This first one (at right), from the November 1810 issue, is called the Royal Patent Invalid Chair, and not only can be wheeled about, but reclines! Note that it has wheels set up so that the person sitting in it can operate the wheels, much like a modern wheelchair.

Even more interesting, though, is this: Merlin’s Mechanical Chair from the October 1811 edition. I have the full text for it, which is fascinating for several reasons. First, the description:

This curious machine, of which a correct perspective view is given in the annexed engraving, is the contrivance of the late ingenious and well-known Merlin. It is expressly calculated for the accommodation of invalids who, from age or infirmity, are unable to walk about, or of persons under the temporary inconvenience of gout or lameness. 

In the library, or on the lawn, or gravel-walk of the pleasure ground, chairs of this kind are peculiarly useful and pleasant. They are in construction an easy reclining or arm-chair, with a foot-board, and, at the extremity of each arm, a small winch handle, easily turned by the hands of the person seated, and which, by their connection with an arrangement of wheels below, propel the chair in any required direction, or with any required velocity, at the pleasure of the operator. These operating handles are seen in the drawing at A and B. C C are two wheels on which the chair runs, having each on its flat and outer surface a brass face wheel, worked by a smaller one (marked D) fitted on the long axis of the winch handle.

E is the third wheel or castor, fitted to the back rail of the chair, and which forms a third point of support, and obeys the direction taken by the wheels C C.

The mode of operation is this: The party being seated, the small brass rod seen in the drawing, passing through the right-hand arm of the chair, is pulled upwards a little way to disengage the wheels, and the winch handle set to point forward as in the position represented in the drawing.

Now, if the two handles be both turned outwards the chair moves directly forward. If turned inwards it moves directly backwards. If the right-hand winch be turned outwards, the left remaining at rest, the chair turns sharply to the left, moving on its left wheel as a center; and vice versa of the left-hand winch if turned the same way, or of the right-hand one if turned inwards or the contrary way. If the two handles be turned the same way, i.e. both to the right-hand, or both to the left, at the same time, the chair will move sharply round to the right or left, having its center, or the operator himself, as its center.

Now here’s where it gets good (boldface is my addition):

The curious evolutions which may thus easily be performed in this chair render it the means of very considerable amusement, as well as of important use, to those who require its agency; but to the mechanical observer it possesses a new interest. It would not be difficult to contrive an arrangement for moving these wheels, or winch handles, by the action of a very small and portable steam-engine, and increasing the dimensions of the whole machine, and adapting it to a suitable upper structure, to render it a most curious mode of quick conveyance, without the agency of animal labour: indeed, it seems to require no great stretch of the imagination to form of the contrivance many other highly interesting machines.

A suitable construction might be hit upon to enable it to carry a small cannon, which should be, both for itself and its operators, completely unassailable by the enemy, as well as, by the singular rapidity of its evolution, terribly and unusually destructive.

Yep. Steam-powered tanks! Don't forget that in 1811 England was at war with Napoleon, so it's hardly surprising this concept would occur. But the jump from invalid chair to motorized tank is still a big one!

In judicious hands, the principle of the machine might possibly be advantageously used in the construction of a self-moving engine for the public conveyance of dispatches, which would have for its leading peculiarities, a rapid and certain rate of traveling, and complete inviolability as to the matters entrusted to its charge.

Of the interest and value of the contrivance in its present shape, those only can judge correctly who have experienced its singular advantages. This drawing is furnished us by Messrs. Morgan and Sanders, of Catherine-street, Strand, whose warehouses are the grand emporium for furniture combining all the essentials of elegance and comfort.

So...from invalid chair to steam-powered tank to mail truck. Not bad, Mr. Ackermann!!