Assignment 4- Richard Trevithick

Late assignment: I don't believe we discussed him in class, but I'm not 100% sure. It sounds like we would have. No one discussed him in the blogs though.

Richard Trevithick was born April 13 1771 in Cornwall, England. He died April 22, 1883 in Kent, England. Trevithick was a mining engineer. His father was a mining captain and his mother was a daughter of a miner. He didn't do very well in school, except for math. His school teacher said he was very disobedient and frequently late or skipped class. Growing up around the mines, Trevithick was fascinated with steam engines. He even lived next door to the steam engine pioneer William Murdoch for a while. He realized that new boiler technology allowed safe production of high pressure steam, and that this could be made to move a piston in a steam engine, instead of "using a pressure of close to one atmosphere in a condensing engine". Murdoch has the idea first, but it was Trevithick who was the first to make the high pressure steam work in 1799. The high pressure steam engine allowed the use of a smaller cylinder saving space and weight. Originally he built a stationary steam engine, but soon after he attached one to a road carriage. The exhaust came out of a vertical pipe or chimney, which made it possible not to use a condenser and not "infringing" on Watt's patents. Trevithick also used a a crank instead of a beam. In1801 he built a full size steam locomotive. He called it the Puffing Devil, and on Christmas Eve, he proved it worked by carrying several men into the next town. Trevithick built a longer running steam powered road vehicle, but it was very uncomfortable for the passengers and far more expensive than horse and carriage, so he abandoned the idea. Trevithick invented more than just the locomotive, he also invented the Cornish boiler, portable room heaters, and he worked with water jet propulsion and refrigeration.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/Images2_R-Z/Richard
Trevithick_SteamEngine_2_small.JPG&imgrefurl=http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/Penydarren
Locomotive.htm&h=100&w=130&sz=47&tbnid=arpTieiZsKYJ:&tbnh=100&tbnw=130&prev=
/images%3Fq%3DRichard%2BTrevithick&hl=en&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=1&ct=imag
e&cd=3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Trevithick