“PUFFING BILLY,” THE OLDEST LOCOMOTIVE ENGINE IN EXISTENCE.
(At present in South Kensington Museum.)
The idea that Stephenson invented the locomotive is a mistake. But just as James Watt improved the crude steam pumps and engines he found in existence, so George Stephenson of immortal memory developed and made practicable the locomotive. For, in spite of Hedley’s discovery or invention, all locomotives were partial failures until Stephenson took the matter in hand.
Nevertheless, William Hedley’s “Puffing Billy” must be regarded as one of the first practicable railway engines ever built. It is still to be seen in the South Kensington Museum, London. Patented in 1813, it began regular work at Wylam in that year, and continued in use until 1872. It was probably this engine which Stephenson saw when he said to Jonathan Foster that he could make a better, and it was no doubt the first to work by smooth wheels on smooth rails. Altogether it has been looked upon as the “father” of the enormous number of locomotives which have followed.
Mr. Blackett was a friend of Richard Trevithick; and among the various inventors and improvers of the locomotive engine Richard Trevithick, a tin-miner in Cornwall, must have a high place.
Trevithick was a pupil of Murdock, who was assistant of James Watt. Murdock had made a model successfully of a locomotive engine at Redruth. Others also had attempted the same thing. Savery had suggested something of the kind; Cugnot, a French engineer, built one in Paris about 1763; Oliver Evans, an American, made a steam carriage in 1772; William Symington, who did so much for the steamboat, constructed a model of one in 1784. So that many minds had been at work on the problem.
But Richard Trevithick was really the first Englishman who used a steam-engine on a railway. He had not much money and he persuaded his cousin, Andrew Vivian, to join him in the enterprise. In 1802 they took out a patent for a steam-engine to propel carriages.
But before this he had made a locomotive to travel along roads, and on Christmas Eve, 1801, the wonderful sight could have been seen of this machine carrying passengers for the first time. It is indeed believed to have been the first occasion on which passengers were conveyed by the agency of steam—the pioneer indeed of a mighty traffic.
The machine was taken to London and exhibited in certain streets, and at length, in 1808, it was shown on ground where now, curiously enough, the Euston Station of the London and North-Western Railway stands. Did any prevision of the extraordinary success of the locomotive flash across the engineer’s brain? Before the infant century had run its course what wonderful developments of the strange new machine were to be seen on that very spot!