Richard Trevithick

Richard Trevithick (1771–1833) was a Cornish inventor and engineer who pioneered high-pressure steam engines and built an early working steam locomotive.

High-pressure steam engine: A steam engine that uses steam above atmospheric pressure to produce mechanical power. Trevithick made compact, powerful engines practical by using steam at high pressure.
Pen-y-darren locomotive: Trevithick’s 1804 steam locomotive, built to haul iron on the Merthyr tramroad in Wales. It demonstrated that a steam locomotive could pull a load along an iron railway.
Andrew Vivian: A Cornish engineer and mine captain who collaborated with Richard Trevithick on steam-engine projects. Vivian partnered with Trevithick on the 1801 road locomotive and helped finance its development.
Railway history: The development of rail transport, railway technology, and railway networks over time. Trevithick’s locomotive trials belong to the early experiments that preceded practical railway systems.
Watt steam engine: A steam engine using a separate condenser, associated with James Watt’s improvements to earlier designs. Watt’s lower-pressure engines offered the established design against which Trevithick’s approach differed.
Puffing Devil: Trevithick’s 1801 road locomotive, which carried passengers near Camborne, Cornwall. This road vehicle showed how his high-pressure engine could propel a carriage.
Samuel Homfray: A Welsh ironmaster who commissioned Trevithick’s locomotive for the Pen-y-darren ironworks. Homfray’s wager and support led to the 1804 locomotive trial.
High-pressure steam controversy: The nineteenth-century dispute over the safety and usefulness of steam engines operating above atmospheric pressure. Trevithick’s engines provoked resistance from engineers who feared boiler explosions.
Steam locomotive: A rail vehicle propelled by a steam engine. Trevithick built one of the earliest working locomotives to run on rails.
London Steam Carriage: A steam-powered road carriage built by Trevithick and demonstrated in London in 1803. It extended his experiments with steam traction from roads in Cornwall to the capital.

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