Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/273

Rh 47. In 1765 that singular genius, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, whose celebrity was acquired by speculations in poetry and philosophy as well as in medicine, urged Matthew Boulton (subsequently Watt's partner, and just then corresponding with our own Franklin in relation to the use of steam-power), to construct a steam-carriage, or "fiery chariot," as he poetically styled it, and of which he sketched a set of plans.

A young man, named Edgeworth, became interested in the scheme, and in 1768 published a paper which had secured for him a gold medal from the Society of Arts. In this paper he proposed railroads on which the carriages were to be drawn by horses, or by ropes from steam-winding engines.



48. These were merely promising schemes, however. The first actual experiment was made, as is supposed, by a French army officer, Nicolas Joseph Cugnot, who in 1769 built a steam-carriage (Fig. 25), which was set at work in presence of the French Minister of War, the Duke de Choiseul. The funds required by him were furnished by the Comte de Saxe. Encouraged by the partial success of the first locomotive, Cugnot, in 1770, constructed a second which is still preserved in the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, Paris. This more powerful carriage (Fig. 25) was fitted with two non-condensing single-acting cylinders, thirteen inches in diameter. Although the experiment seems to have been successful, there appears to have been nothing more done with it.

An American of considerable distinction, Nathan Read, patented a steam-carriage, 1790, of the form seen in Fig. 26, which is copied from his patent. The cylinders F F lie under the body of the carriage: the pistons E F drive racks B G, which turn the wheels A K. The steering-wheel I moves the large wheels A K, which