William Murdock, in Soho, were for the purpose of using compressed air for
common road locomotives. He also invented a portable gas apparatus, and
originated a society of gentlemen, with the intention of forming a company
for the purpose of running a mail coach and other carriages by means of a
high-pressure engine, or of a gas vacuum or pneumatic engine, supplied
with portable gas. Alexander Gordon, his son, states that "the committee
of the society had only a limited sum at their disposal, nor were there to
be more funds until a carriage had been propelled for a considerable
distance at the rate of ten miles an hour." David Gordon then tried to
prevail upon the committee to make use of a steam engine, but evidently
without success.
In 1821 he took out a patent for improvements in wheel carriages, and his
locomotive is fully described in the interesting Treatise on Elemental
Locomotion, by Mr. Alexander Gordon. The machine consisted of a large
hollow cylinder about nine feet in diameter and five long, having its
internal circumference provided with a continuous series of cogged teeth,
into which were made to work the cogged running wheels of a locomotive
steam engine, similar to that of Trevithick. The steam power being
communicated to the wheels of the carriage, caused them to revolve, and to
climb up the internal rack of the large cylinder. The center of gravity of
the engine being thus constantly made to change its position, and to throw
its chief weight on the forward side of the axis of the cylinder, the
latter was compelled to roll forward, propelling the vehicle before it,
and whatever train might be added.
Gordon's next attempt to construct locomotive carriages for the common
road was in 1824. The means proposed was a modification of the method
invented by William Brunton. But instead of the propellers being operated
upon by the alternating motion of the piston-rod, as in Brunton's vehicle,
Gordon contrived to give them a continuous rotatory action and to apply
the force of the engines in a more direct manner. The carriage ran upon
three wheels, one in the front to steer by, and two behind to bear the
chief weight. Each of the wheels had a separate axle, the ends of which
had their bearings upon parallel bars, the wheels rolling in a
perpendicular position. This arrangement, by avoiding the usual
cross-axle, afforded an increased uninterrupted space in the body of the
vehicle.
In the fore part of the carriage were placed the steam engines, consisting
of two brass cylinders, in a horizontal position, but vibrating upon
trunnions. The piston-rods of these engines gave motion to an eight-throw
crank, two in the middle for the cylinders, and three on each side, to
which were attached the propellers; by the revolution of the crank, these
propellers or legs were successively forced outwards, with the feet of
each against the ground in a backward direction, and were immediately
afterwards lifted from the ground by the revolution of another crank,
parallel to the former, and situated at a proper distance from it on the
same frame. The propelling-rods were formed of iron gas-tubes, filled with
wood, to combine lightness with strength. To the lower ends of these
propelling-rods were attached the feet, in the form of segments of
circles, and made on their under side like a short and very stiff brush of
whalebone, supported by intermixed iron teeth, to take effect in case the
whalebone failed. These feet pressed against the ground in regular
succession, by a kind of rolling, circular motion, without digging it up.
The guide had the power of lifting these legs off the ground at pleasure,
so that in going down hill, when the gravity was sufficient for
propulsion, nothing but a brake was put into requisition to retard the
motion, if necessary. If the carriage was proceeding upon a level, the
lifting of the propellers was equivalent to the subtraction of the power,
and soon brought it to a full stop. When making turns in a road the guide
had only to lift the propellers on one side of the carriage and allow the
others to operate alone, until the curve was traversed.
Gordon got fair results from this locomotive, but the speed was not
satisfactory. In his first trials he found the power insufficient. He
afterwards fitted one of Gurney's light boilers in the hinder part of the
carriage, though even after this improvement had been added the
experiments were disappointing. Gordon was convinced that the application
of the power to the wheels was the proper mode of propulsion, and his
project was abandoned after six or seven years had been spent in
inventing, constructing, and carrying out experiments with four distinct
carriages.
WILLIAM HENRY JAMES
Born at Henley, England, March, 1776. Died at Dulwich College Alms House,
December 16, 1873.
The father of William Henry James was William James, of Warwickshire, the
great railway projector of his time. He was a solicitor in early life, but
became wealthy, worked a colliery in South Staffordshire, and in 1815
removed to London, where he had a large land agency business. He became
interested in tramways in 1806, and from that date on devoted most of his
energies and fortune to projecting railways in the United Kingdom. He had
an interest in one of George Stephenson's patents, made numerous railway
surveys, and by many has been considered to have done more than any single
individual in laying the foundations of the English railroad system.
William Henry James assisted his father in his railway surveys in early
life, and then began business independently as an engineer, in Birmingham.
He made experiments in steam locomotion on common roads, and took out
patents for locomotive steam engines, boilers, driving apparatus, and so
on. His patent for a water-tube boiler for road locomotives was secured in
1823, and his first car was built in 1824. This was a twenty-passenger
steam coach. Each rear wheel had a double-cylinder engine, and the pistons
were worked at a pressure of two hundred pounds per square inch. Separate
engines to each driver gave each wheel an independent motion, so that
power and speed might be varied for turning corners, the outer wheel
travelling over a much greater space than the inner wheel. When the front
wheels were so placed that the carriage proceeded in a straight line an
equal amount of steam was admitted to each pair of cylinders, but when the
front wheel was in the lock the engine driving the outer wheel received a
greater amount of steam and thus developed more power and traveled faster
than the inner wheel. This arrangement was said to be so efficient that
the carriage could be made to describe every variety of curve, repeatedly
making turns of less than ten feet radius. The whole of the machinery was
mounted upon laminated carriage springs. This arrangement caused the
engines and their framework to vibrate altogether upon the crank-shaft as
a center, at the same time connecting these engines to the boiler by means
of hollow axles moving in stuffing boxes. Each engine had two cylinders of
small diameter and long stroke; to these separate engines steam was
supplied from the boiler by means of the main pipe, which moved through
steam-tight stuffing boxes to the slide valve-boxes by small pipes. The
locomotive was entirely distinct from the passenger carriage.
Sir James C. Anderson became associated with James, and in 1829 they built
another carriage. This weighed nearly three tons, and the first trials
were made round a circle of one hundred and sixty feet in diameter. When
it was finally ready to be brought out it was loaded with fifteen
passengers and driven several miles on a rough gravel road across Epping
Forest, with a speed varying from twelve to fifteen miles an hour. Steam
was supplied by two tubular boilers, each forming a hollow cylinder four
feet six inches long. The tubes of which the boilers were composed were
common gas pipe, one of which split on one of the trips, thus letting the
water out of one of the boilers and extinguishing its fire. Under these
circumstances, with only one boiler in operation, the carriage returned
home at the rate of about seven miles an hour, carrying more than twenty
passengers--at one period, indeed, it is said, a much greater number;
showing that sufficient steam could be generated in such a boiler to be
equal to the propulsion of between five and six tons weight. In
consequence of this demonstration that the most brilliant success was
attainable, the proprietors dismantled the carriage and commenced the
construction of superior tubular boilers with much stronger tubes.
Shortly after Anderson and James commenced to build another steam
carriage, which was ready for use in November, 1829. This engine was not
intended to carry passengers, but to be employed for drawing carriages
behind. Four tubular boilers were used, the total number of tubes being
nearly two hundred. These boilers were enclosed in a space four feet wide,
three feet long, and two feet deep. The steam from each boiler was
conducted into one main steam pipe one and one-half inches in diameter,
and the communication from any one of the boilers could be cut off in case
of leakage. Four cylinders, each two and one-quarter inch bore and nine
inch stroke, were arranged vertically in the hind part of the locomotive,
and two of them acted upon each crank-shaft as before, giving a separate
motion to each driving wheel.
The exhaust steam was conducted through two copper tanks for heating the
feed water to a high temperature, and thence passed to the chimney. The
steering-gear consisted of an external pillar containing a vertical shaft,
at the upper end of which small bevel-gearing was used, giving motion to
the vertical shaft, whose bottom end carried a pinion gearing into a
sector attached to the fore axle. The motion of the crank-shafts was
communicated to the separate axles of the driving-wheels by spur-gearing
with two speeds.
In experiments made with this carriage, the greatest speed obtained upon a
level, on a very indifferent road, was at the rate of fifteen miles an
hour, and it never ran more than three or four miles without breaking some
of the steam joints. The Mechanic's Magazine, reporting one of these
trials, said: "A series of interesting experiments were made throughout
the whole of yesterday with a new steam carriage belonging to Sir James
Anderson, Bart., and W. H. James, Esq., on the Vauxhall, Kensington, and
Clapham roads, with the view of ascertaining the practical advantages of
some perfectly novel apparatus attached to the engines, the results of
which were so satisfactory that the proprietors intend immediately
establishing several stage coaches on the principle. The writer was
favored with a ride during the last experiment, when the machine proceeded
from Vauxhall Bridge to the Swan at Clapham, a distance of two and a half
miles, which was run at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. From what I had
the pleasure of witnessing, I am confident that this carriage is far
superior to every other locomotive carriage hitherto brought before the
public, and that she will easily perform fifteen miles an hour throughout
a long journey. The body of the carriage, if not elegant, is neat, being
the figure of a parallelogram. It is a very small and compact machine, and
runs upon four wheels."
W. H. James patented another steam carriage in August, 1832. This varied
much from his earlier engines in the working parts, and it was not
generally considered to be as satisfactory as the others. Sir James
Anderson was not able, for pecuniary reasons, to continue to back James in
his experimenting, and it does not appear that these plans of 1832 were
ever consummated in a completed vehicle.
James was a man of strong mind, an original thinker and thoroughly
well-trained by his apprenticeship with his father. He spent a good part
of his life in experimenting with common-road steam propulsion, but he had
not monetary resources or financial ability commensurate with his
mechanical genius. When the support of Anderson was withdrawn from him he
seems to have been compelled to give up. Little has been recorded
concerning the latter years of his life, and his death in the almshouse
sufficiently indicates the poverty in which his last years were spent. His
father also sacrificed his life to the cause of railroad advancement,
losing his entire fortune and dying a poor man.
GOLDSWORTHY GURNEY
Born at Treator, near Padstow, Cornwall, England, February 14, 1793. Died
at Reeds, near Bade, February 28, 1875.
The son of John Gurney, Goldsworthy Gurney received a good elementary
education at the Truro Grammar School, and then studied medicine. He
settled at Wadebridge as a surgeon, but although very successful,
gradually turned his attention to scientific and mechanical
investigations. He constructed an organ, studied chemistry and mechanical
science, and removing to London in 1820, delivered a series of lectures on
heat, electricity and gases at the Surrey Institute. His investigations
resulted in the invention of the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe, and the discovery
of the powerful lime-light known as the Drummond light, and he engaged in
other experiments in this field of research.
In 1804, while on a holiday at Camborne, he saw a Trevithick engine on
wheels. Recalling this in after years he began experimenting on steam
locomotion in 1823, and soon abandoned his surgical and medical practice
for this new pursuit. His first efforts were toward the construction of an
engine to travel on the common roads. The weight of the steam engines that
were then being built seemed to him to offer great objections to their use
for this purpose, but he succeeded, with his first machine, in reducing
weight from four tons to thirty hundredweight. Then he secured a
sufficiency of power by the invention of the high-pressure steam jet. This
invention differed from those of Stephenson and Trevithick, who sent their
waste steam up through the chimney instead of utilizing it. The Gurney
jet was applied to the Stephenson Rocket engine on the Liverpool and
Manchester Railway, in October, 1829, and also to steamboats and steam
carriages.
In 1823, Gurney made his first experiments with a model steam carriage, on
which propellers or feet were used. Two years later, in 1825, he completed
a full-size carriage on the same plan, and in May of that year he took out
his first patent for this vehicle. The carriage was impelled by these legs
being alternately drawn forwards and pressed backwards by a steam engine
acting upon them through movable oblong blocks, to which they were
attached. As a first experiment this carriage was driven up Windmill Hill,
near Kilburn. Another trip, between London and Edgeware, demonstrated the
inefficiency of these propellers, and led to the discovery that there was
sufficient friction between wheels and the ground to insure propulsion.
In 1826 he constructed a coach about twenty feet long, which would
accommodate six inside and fifteen outside passengers, besides the
engineer. The driving-wheels were five feet diameter, and the leading
wheels three feet nine inches diameter. Two propellers were used, which
could be put in motion when the carriage was climbing hills. Gurney's
patent boiler was used for supplying steam to the twelve horse-power
engine. The total weight of the carriage was about a ton and a half. In
front of the coach was a capacious boot, while behind, that which had the
appearance of a boot, was the case for the boiler and the furnace, from
which it was calculated that no inconvenience would be experienced by the
outside passenger, although in cold weather a certain degree of heat might
be obtained, if required. In descending a hill, there was a brake fixed on
the hind wheel, to increase the friction; but, independently of this, the
guide had the power of lessening the force of the steam to any extent by
means of the lever at his right hand, which operated upon the throttle
valve, and by which he could stop the action of the steam altogether and
effect a counter vacuum in the cylinders. By this means also he regulated
the rate of progress on the road. There was another lever by which he
could stop the vehicle instantly, and in a moment reverse the motion of
the wheels.
This carriage traveled up Highgate Hill to Edgeware, and also to Stanmore,
and went up both Stanmore Hill and Brockley Hill. In ascending these hills
the driving-wheels did not slip, so that the legs were not needed. After
these experiments the propellers were removed.
Gurney obtained another patent in 1827, and under this worked a steam
carriage resembling the common stage coach, with the boiler in the hind
boot. This carriage was run experimentally to Barnet, Edgeware, Finchley,
and other places, and in 1828 it was said that a trip was made from London
to Melksham, thirteen miles from Bath, a distance of nearly two hundred
miles. On the return trip the rate of speed was about twelve miles an
hour.
Gurney's carriage so fully established its practicability, that in 1830,
Sir Charles Dance contracted for several, and ran them successfully from
London to Holyhead, and from Birmingham to Bristol. In the following year
he ran over the turnpike road between Gloucester and Cheltenham for four
months in succession, four times a day, without an accident or delay of
consequence. The distance of nine miles was regularly covered in from
forty-five to fifty-five minutes. Nearly three thousand persons were
carried, and nearly four thousand miles traveled.
A strong public sentiment against the use of the common roads by these
vehicles sprang up, and Parliament was prevailed upon to impose upon steam
carriages heavy highway tolls that were in effect prohibitory. Sir Charles
Dance suspended his operations. Gurney petitioned the House of Commons for
relief. Several committees in 1831, 1834 and 1835 investigated the subject
and reported strongly in favor of steam carriages, but no legislation
could be secured, and Gurney was forced to give up further introduction of
steam carriages.
He continued his experimenting in other directions, invented the stove
that bore his name, introduced new methods of lighting and ventilating the
Houses of Parliament, and was otherwise active in scientific pursuits. He
was a magistrate for Cornwall and Devonshire, and in 1863 was knighted in
recognition of his discoveries and inventions.
By writers of that period Gurney received a great deal of credit and an
abundance of advertising for his work. He was especially conspicuous in
the Parliamentary investigations regarding steam carriages. On the whole,
however, it is generally considered that he was proclaimed far beyond his
merits, especially in comparison with such rivals as Hancock, Maceroni and
others.
THOMAS BLANCHARD
Born in Sutton, Mass., June 24, 1788. Died, April 16, 1864.
Blanchard received a common school education, and before he had entered
his teens his mechanical genius began to show itself. At thirteen years of
age he invented a machine for paring apples, and shortly after, a machine
for making tacks. His great work was the invention of a machine for
turning out articles of irregular form from wood and metals. His lathes
for this purpose were put in operation by the United States Government in
the armories at Harper's Ferry, Va., and Springfield, Mass.
Becoming interested in the subject of steam propulsion he made, in 1826, a
steamboat that was successfully tried on the Connecticut River, running
from Hartford, Conn., to Springfield, Mass. Afterward, he built a boat of
larger size, that drew eighteen inches of water, and ran this up the
Connecticut River, from Springfield, Mass., to Vermont. He also built
other boats for use on the Alleghany River.
The subjects of railroads and locomotive power on land interested him for
a short time, and in 1825, after he had completed his engagement with the
United States armories, he built, at Springfield, Mass., a carriage driven
by steam for use on the common road. This was the first real steam
carriage constructed in this country, the Philadelphia machine of Evans
being but a rude affair, although it involved the essential principles of
steam propulsion. The Blanchard carriage was perfectly manageable,
could turn corners and go backwards and forwards with all the readiness of
a well-trained horse, and on ascending a hill the power could be
increased. Its performance on the highway was altogether satisfactory, and
a patent was issued to its inventor.
[Illustration: THOMAS BLANCHARD]
Blanchard endeavored to secure support to build a railroad in
Massachusetts, and the joint committee on roads and canals of the
Massachusetts Legislature, in January, 1826, endorsed the model of his
railway and steam carriage, and recommended them "to all the friends of
internal improvements." Notwithstanding this report, capitalists viewed
the project as visionary, and Blanchard met with no greater success when
he subsequently applied to the Legislature of New York. Giving up his
plans he thenceforward devoted his attention to the subject of steam
navigation.
Blanchard was a prolific inventor, having taken out no less than thirty or
forty patents for as many different inventions. He did not reap great
benefit from his labors, for many of his inventions scarcely paid the cost
of getting them up, while others were appropriated without payment to him,
or even giving him credit. His machine for turning irregular forms was his
most notable work, and even of that, others sought to defraud him. To
defend himself he was forced to go to the courts and even to Congress,
before he succeeded in establishing his rights. After the success of this
machine he made other improvements in the manufacture of arms,
constructing thirteen different machines that were operated in the
government armories.
JOHNSON
Two brothers Johnson had a small engineering establishment in
Philadelphia, in 1828. They put upon the streets in that year a vehicle
that J. G. Pangborn, in his The World's Rail Way, says was "the first
steam wagon built, and actually operated as such, in the United States."
The same writer, describing this wagon, says that it had a single cylinder
set horizontally, with a connecting-rod attachment with a single crank at
the middle of the driving-axle. Its two driving-wheels were eight feet in
diameter and made of wood, the same as those on an ordinary road wagon.
The two forward or guiding wheels were much smaller than the others, and
were arranged in the usual manner of a common wagon. It had an upright
boiler hung up behind, shaped like a huge bottle, the smoke-stack coming
out through the center of the top. The safety-valve was held down by a
weight and lever, and the horses in the neighborhood did not take at all
kindly to the puffing of the machine as it jolted over the rough streets.
Generally it ran well, and could take without difficulty reasonable grades
in the streets and roadways. During its existence, however, it knocked
down a number of awning-posts, ran into and broke several window fronts,
and sometimes was altogether unmanageable. Like all others of their day,
however, the Johnsons were ahead of their time. There was no demand for
their steam wagon, road conditions made it unavailable and the machine
itself was, despite much merit, really not much more than a suggestion of
better things three-quarters of a century later.
WALTER HANCOCK
Born in Marlborough, Wiltshire, England, June 16, 1799. Died May 14, 1852.
The father of Walter Hancock was James Hancock, a timber merchant and
cabinet maker. Walter received a common school education, and then was
apprenticed to a watchmaker and jeweler in London. The bent of his
inclination, however, was toward engineering, and he turned his attention
to experimenting along the lines that were at that time absorbing the
thoughts and efforts of those men of England interested in mechanical and
scientific subjects.