Richard Trevithick, (born April 13, 1771, Illogan, Cornwall, England—died April 22, 1833, Dartford, Kent), British mechanical engineer and inventor who efficiently harnessed high-pressure steam and constructed the world’s first steam railway locomotive (1803). In 1805 he tailored his high-pressure engine to driving an iron-rolling mill and to propelling a barge with the help of paddle wheels.
Trevithick spent his youth at Illogan within the tin-mining district of Cornwall and attended the village faculty. The schoolmaster described him as “disobedient, slow and obstinate.” His father, a mine supervisor, thought of him a idler, and all through his profession Trevithick remained scarcely literate. Early in life, nonetheless, he displayed a unprecedented expertise in engineering. Because of his intuitive potential to unravel issues that perplexed educated engineers, he obtained his first job as engineer to a number of Cornish ore mines in 1790 on the age of 19. In 1797 he married Jane Harvey of a distinguished engineering household. She bore him six youngsters, one in all whom, Francis, turned locomotive superintendent of the London & North Western Railway and later wrote a biography of his father.
Because Cornwall has no coalfields, excessive import prices obliged the ore-mine operators to train inflexible economic system within the consumption of gas for pumping and hoisting. Cornish engineers, subsequently, discovered it crucial to enhance the effectivity of the steam engine. The huge engine then in use was the low-pressure kind invented by James Watt. Inventive however cautious, Watt thought that “strong steam” was too harmful to harness; Trevithick thought otherwise. He quickly realized that, by utilizing high-pressure steam and permitting it to increase inside the cylinder, a a lot smaller and lighter engine might be constructed with none much less energy than within the low-pressure kind.
In 1797 Trevithick constructed high-pressure working fashions of each stationary and locomotive engines that had been so profitable that he constructed a full-scale, high-pressure engine for hoisting ore. In all, he constructed 30 such engines; they had been so compact that they might be transported in an atypical farm wagon to the Cornish mines, the place they had been generally known as “puffer whims” as a result of they vented their steam into the ambiance.
Trevithick constructed his first steam carriage, which he drove up a hill in Camborne, Cornwall, on Christmas Eve 1801. The following March, along with his cousin Andrew Vivian, he took out his historic patent for high-pressure engines for stationary and locomotive use. In 1803 he constructed a second carriage, which he drove by the streets of London, and constructed the world’s first steam railway locomotive at Samuel Homfray’s Penydaren Ironworks in South Wales. On February 21, 1804, that engine received a wager for Homfray by hauling a load of 10 tons of iron and 70 males alongside 10 miles of tramway. A second, comparable locomotive was constructed at Gateshead in 1805, and in 1808 Trevithick demonstrated a 3rd, the Catch-me-who-can, on a round monitor laid close to Euston Road in London. He then deserted these initiatives, as a result of the cast-iron rails proved too brittle for the load of his engines.
In 1805 Trevithick tailored his high-pressure engine to driving an iron-rolling mill and propelling a barge with the help of paddle wheels. His engine additionally powered the world’s first steam dredgers (1806) and drove a threshing machine on a farm (1812). Such engines couldn't have succeeded with out the enhancements Trevithick made within the design and development of boilers. For his small engines, he constructed a boiler and engine as a single unit, however he additionally designed a big wrought-iron boiler with a single inner flue, which turned identified all through the world because the Cornish kind. It was used together with the equally well-known Cornish pumping engine, which Trevithick perfected with the help of native engineers. The latter was twice as financial because the Watt kind, which it quickly changed.
Trevithick, a quick-tempered and impulsive man, was completely missing in enterprise sense. An untrustworthy accomplice brought about the failure of a London enterprise he began in 1808 for the manufacture of a sort of iron tank Trevithick had patented; chapter adopted in 1811. Three years later, 9 of Trevithick’s engines had been ordered for the Peruvian silver mines, and, dreaming of limitless mineral wealth within the Andes Mountains, he sailed to South America in 1816. After many adventures, he returned to England in 1827, penniless, to search out that in his absence different engineers, notably George Stephenson, had profited from his innovations. He died in poverty and was buried in an unmarked grave.