The Locomotive - Lighthouse Survival Blog

124 THE LOCOMOTIVE [August,
hard enougli for the most conscientious fireman to disprove it, especially as the jioor
fellow is too often killed by the very explosion his carelessness is said to have caused.
Early Locomotives.
We have had several inquiries about the early history of locomotives, and aa a
general answer to our correspondents, we quote the following from Dr. Thurston's
Manual of the Steam Engine: " When the steam engine had been so far perfected that
the possibility of its application to other purposes than the elevation of water had become
generally recognized, the j^i'oblem of its adaptation to the propulsion of carriages
was attacked by many engineers and inventors. As early as 1759, Dr. Rol)ison called
the attention of Watt to the possibility of constructing a carriage to be driven by a steamengine.
Watt, at a very early period, proposed to apply his engine to locomotion, and
contemplated using either a non-condensing engine or an air surface-condenser. He in-
cluded the locomotive-engine in his patent of 1784, and his assistant, Murdoch, in the
same year made a working-model locomotive which was capable of running at a rapid
rate.
" The first actual experiment was made, as is supposed, by a French army oflScer,
Nicholas Joseph Cugnot, who, in 1769, built a steam-carriage, which was set at work in
presence of the French Minister of War, the Due de Choiseul. The funds required 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 Metiers, Paris. This more powerful carriage 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
in 1790. In 1804 Oliver Evans completed a flat-bottomed boat to be used at the Phila-
delphia docks, and, mounting it upon wheels, drew it by its own steam-engine to the
river-bank. Launching the craft, he propelled it down the river, using its steam-engine
to drive its paddle-wheels. Evans's ' oructor amphiholis,'' as he named the machine, was
the first road-locomotive that we find described after Cugnot's time. Evans asserted
that carriages propelled by steam would soon be in common use, and offered a wager of
three hundred dollars that he could build a ' steam-wagon ' that should excel in speed
the swiftest horse that could be matched against it.
" Trevithick and Vivian built a locomotive-engine in 1804 for the railway at
Merthyr-Tydvil, in South Wales, which was quite successful, although sometimes giving
trouble by slipping its wheels. This engine had one steam cylinder 4| inches in
diameter, and carried 40 pounds of steam.
"Colonel John Stevens of Hoboken was undoubtedly the greatest engineer and
naval architect living at the beginning of the present century. Without having made
any one superlatively great improvement in the mechanism of the steam-engine, like that
which gave Watt his fame, without having the honor of being the first to propose navi-
gation by steam, or steam transportation on land, he exhibited a far better knowledge of
the science and of the art of engineering than any man of his time, and he entertained
and urged more advanced opinions and more statesmanlike views, in relation to the
economical importance of the improvement of the steam-engine, both on land and water,
than seem to have been attributable to any other leading engineer of that time. In 1813
he published a pamphlet embodying 'Documents tending to prove the Superior
Advantages of Railways and Steam-carriages over Canal Navigation.' At this time the