FAMOUS INVENTOR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21783, 24 April 1934, Page 11

FAMOUS INVENTOR

FIRST STEAM ENGINE MEMORIAL TO TREVITHICK AMAZING CAREER RECALLED By Telegraph—Press Association—CopyriKht British Wireless RUGBY, April 22 A memorial to Ricliard Trevitliick, inventor oL : the high-pressure steam engine, who died about 100 years ago, has been unveiled at Merthyr Tydfil, in South Wales, where Trevithick served his time as an engineer. It was also at Merthyr Tydfil that Trevithick made his epoch-making invention of a tramway track over which his locomotive, drawing a number of trucks containing 10 tons of pig iron and 70 men, made its first journey on February 21, 1807. The train actually crossed the site of the memorial.

A hundred years ago, on April 22, 1533, Richard Trevithick, who designed and drove the first steam locomotive which ever carried human-passengers, died at the ago of 62. He was buried at Dartford, in a pauper's grave, unmarked by any tombstone, though the funeral expenses were increased by furnishing his coffin with stout oak cross-bearers bolted together, as a precaution against the possibility of bodysnatching. Now Mr. H. W. Dickinson and Mr. Arthur Titley have celebrated his centenary with a fully documented biography, said Malcolm Ewing in John o' "London recently. Born in 1771 in Cornwall, where his father was a mining manager, Trevithick started life as an engineer at 19, and was quickly involved in litigation with Watt for infringement of patents. In 1797 he introduced the plunger pole pump in place of the bucket pump for deep mining, and began to experiment with high-pressure engines, which became knowji as "puffers" from the noise they made, and proved "handier, cheaper and more compact' than Watt's low-pressure models. . Not content with local celebrity and success in the Cornish mines, Trevithick went to London and experimented with steam road carriages. One of his assistants describes an experimental run in a carriage built to hold eight or 10 pel sons —-how they started down Tottenham Court Road at four in the moi ning, travelling at from four to nine miles an hour, with Trevithick cheerfully speculating about the depth of the" neighbouring canal if they should run into it. When eventually they tore down several yards of garden railings, an irate householder yelled from his bedroom window, " What the devil are you doing there ? What the devil is that thing?" . . Trevithick's other engineering activities were extraordinarily varied. He drove a canal barge with a steam engine and paddle-wheels, constructed steam dredgers for work on the Thames, and during the scare of a Napoleonic invasion in 1804 proposed the use of steam-driven fireships against the French lleot. In spite of various successes, he went bankrupt in 1811, and fivo years later sailed for as a mining engineer. Engaging in miscellaneous operations in South America throughout the next decade, he made a pioneer expedition across Nicaragua at the age of 55, and on returning to Europe designed a recoil gun-carriage, superintended drainage operations for the Dutch Government, and experimented with heating apparatus. His last project before his death was the erection of a cast-iron column, five times the height of the Nelson Column and more than two and a-quarter times that of St. Paul's Cathedral, to commemorate the passing of the Reform BilL , « „ • Trevithick's fame has suffered in comparison with that of Watt and Stephenson, because, unlike them, he was financially unsuccessful. He was an erratic genius, induced to rash speculation by inventive enthusiasm; when he made money by one successful invention, he lost it in exploiting another, which failed only for want of patience in perfecting the design. He was a gay and gallant adventurer.