Portrait of Richard Trevithick by John Linnell, 1816 (Science Museum, London)
These pages have been created by the Trevithick Society, one of the oldest industrial preservation societies in the UK, using Google maps to locate the most important places in the life of Richard Trevithick – an inventor of brilliance and one of the great pioneers of the Industrial Revolution.
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Places in the life of Richard Trevithick
Southwest England and Wales
Camborne Map
1771. Richard Trevithick was born into a mine management family in the parish of Illogan near Camborne, Cornwall, on 13th April 1771. He was not an ideal pupil at school but was good at sports and had a remarkable ability with mathematics. At the age of just seventeen he was appointed engineer at a local mine, the Dolcoath Mine, and started to envisage a new steam engine design. This would successfully use high-pressure steam instead of atmospheric pressure to operate the piston and was in defiance of James Watt’s patent on all steam engine design. This would set him at odds with Watt until the expiry of the patent in 1800.
The crux of Trevithick’s invention was the cylindrical boiler with an internal furnace and integral cylinder that safely contained the high-pressure steam and avoided the dangerous and frequently leaking pipework between the boiler and the cylinder. This effective boiler was subsequently and universally known as the Cornish boiler.
Because his engines exhausted to air, instead of Watt’s famous condenser, they chuffed and became known as ‘Puffers’. After providing several of these smaller, lighter forms of engine for mine work, Trevithick’s first significant adaptation of the engine was to propel a road vehicle in Camborne on Christmas Eve 1801
The vehicle made a few further journeys in the following four days before going out of control on the a trip to Tehidy Park, the home of Trevithick’s benefactor, Lord Dedunstanville.
Falmouth
1816. Trevithick and two others depart aboard the Asp for Peru with engines and equipment. They landed at Callao, Lima and climbed to Cerro de Pasco.
Hayle Map
In 1797 Richard Trevithick married Jane, a daughter of John Harvey an iron founder at Hayle. Harvey built many of Trevithick’s early engines. On his death, his son Henry Harvey operated and expanded the foundry; it would become the largest international supplier of mining machinery in the world. He continued to supply Trevithick with a variety of engines and parts but their relationship was never an affable one. Henry Harvey assisted Jane to care for her six children whilst Trevithick was in South America for eleven years.
1829. After visiting Kindersdijk in Holland to discuss pumping the polders by means of steam engines, Trevithick and his son Francis design a ship-mounted steam pump that is built by Harveys of Hayle. Harveys were later to build the largest steam pumps in the world for the Dutch at Leeghwater and Cruguis.
Merthyr Tydfil Map
1804. Trevithick was installing his steam engines in the iron works belonging to Samuel Homfray at Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales. He demonstrated the ability of his engine to pull a train consisting of ten tons of iron and seventy people the nine miles from Penydarren to Abercynon. This was the world’s first self-propelled railway journey and attracted a lot of attention to Trevithick’s engines. The cast iron rails broke under the weight of the engine and few journeys were made.
1804. Trevithick’s boiler for the Tredegar iron rolling mill engine is built in modular form.
Plymouth Breakwater
1812. Trevithick and John Urpeth Rastrick devised an engine that would cut and load 100 tons of granite stone blocks a day for the breakwater to protect Plymouth Sound.
List of places
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