Can’t stand the pressure

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Nobody thought high-pressure engines were possible, but one man dared to dream.

Last month we looked at the steam pump used for dewatering mines in the first days of the industrial revolution. These pumps revolutionized the industry, but almost as soon as they were invented, they were outclassed and made obsolete due to a new breed of engineers who pushed new designs and the new age.

Perhaps the most famous of these designers was Richard Trevethick, a young man who had little interest in the mix of Latin and grammar that made up school lessons at the start of the nineteenth century. Instead he preferred the dangerous new art of practical science, and spent his days devising ways of automating the universe. He discovered that it was both possible and necessary to run steam at a much higher pressure than previously thought possible.

To demonstrate the new boilers he built a ‘car' way back in 1801 - which was a stem engine strapped to a horse drawn carriage. It blew up while idling after a few days, but undeterred he built another one and ran an informal shuttle service around London, mostly for the benefit of the press, as a regular horse-drawn carriage was quicker and more comfortable than the wheezy beam-engine.

However, the benefits of using high-pressure steam were quickly realised and orders came in for engines , mostly for de-watering purposes. Unfortunately, in 1803 one such apparatus exploded, killing four workers. While the explosion was largely down to operator error, Trevethick's rivals and proponents of the older low-pressure technology exploited this disaster. Trevethick responded by incorporating safety valves in the equipment - the first steam manufacturer to do so.

The following year, he has approached to see if he could supply equipment for a massive earthmoving project which was a tunnel under the river Thames. Despite numerous other attempts by engineers to achieve this previously, Trevethick thought he could use his equipment to speed the dig, but his team only managed about three quarters of the span, when the whole thing flooded. Trevethick was the last to leave the site, and narrowly avoided being drowned. However, it proved his engines could be put to a variety of uses and could be worked in any conditions.

By now he turned his attention to railway locomotives, and though his spindly engines were likened to ‘puffing trombones', he won a bet that his engine could pull ten tones of iron ore over a distance of about 15 km. The only engine suilable was powering giant hammers at an ironworks, but it was soon converted into a proper railway engine. After the bet was won, the engineer felt he could further show the superiority of machined over animal power by setting up a ‘steam circus' in London.

It wasn't successful, and Trevethick died penniless years later in 1833, but as the Society of Civil Engineers said; "In the brief period between 1799 and 1808 he totally changed the breed of steam engines, from an unwieldy giant of limited ability he evolved a prime mover of universal application". And so the first useable power for earthmovers and transport was born.

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