Page:Report from the Select Committee on Steam Carriages.pdf/144



Mr. Richard Trevithick. 17 August, 1831. 60 seconds is to 621 yards, so is 43 seconds to 445 yards. Thus, the calculated distance of the run, considering the wheel as a perambulator, agrees within five yards with the space actually passed over, and this difference might arise from the most trifling in accuracy of noting the time, a quarter of a second at each end being sufficient to produce this discrepancy, so that it might fairly be concluded there was no slip ping of the wheels at a velocity of nearly 22 miles an hour with a load. If wheels will not slip round on iron roads, there can be no doubt but that they will be firm on common roads. A Steam Carriage never needs the wheel chained, or to be still in going down hill, because if a throttle cock is put between the dis charge pipe and the piston, it cannot go down hill any faster than the Steam is permitted to make its escape from before the piston, and if required would stand still instantly. Below is stated the commencement of both my high pressure and locomotive Steam Engines, with the advantages derived from them.— Since 1804, at which time I invented and erected this high pressure Engine, up to the present time, little improvement has been made in addition to my own. The first locomotive Engine ever seen was one that I set to work in 1804, on a rail-road at Merthyr Tydvil, in Wales, which performed its work to admiration, a correct copy of which is now in general use on the rail-roads; the advantages gained by this improvement was a detached Engine, independent of all fixtures, working with five times the power of Boulton and Watt's Engine, without condensing water, and the fire inclosed in the boiler surrounded with water, and a force draught created by the Steam for the purpose of working on the roads without a high chimney, and from this was copied all the boilers for Navigation Engines, which without it could not have been available; this being independent of brick-work, light, safe from fire, and occupying little room. In March 1830, Davies Gilbert. Esquire, then President of the Royal Society, wrote a Treatise on the improvement made in the efficiency of the largest Steam Engines in the world, then working in Cornwall, in which he