Automobile Biographies / An Account of the Lives and the Work of Those Who Have Been Identified with the Invention and Development of Self-Propelled Vehicles on the Common Roads

by Lyman Horace Weeks

James Viney

Colonel James Viney, Royal Engineers, in 1829 patented a boiler intended for steam carriages. His plan was to have two, three, four, or six concentric hollow cylinders containing water, between which the fire from below passed up. An annular space for water, and an annular space or flue for the ascending fire, were placed alternately, the water being between two fires.

Chevalier Bordino

An Italian officer of engineers, Bordino devised and constructed a steam carriage for the diversion of his little daughter. It was a carriage à la Dumont, and for forty years was used regularly in the carnival festivities of Turin in the early part of the nineteenth century. It is still preserved as donated by the widow of Bordino to the Industrial Museum of Turin.

Clive

Best known as a writer of articles on the steam carriage, over the signature of Saxula, in the Mechanic’s Magazine, Clive, of Cecil House, Staffordshire, England, also engaged in experimenting with steam. In 1830, he secured patents for two improvements in locomotives, one increasing the diameter of the wheels and the other increasing the throw of the cranks. After a time he seems to have lost faith in the steam carriage, for in 1843 he wrote: “I am an old common road steam carriage projector, but gave it up as impracticable ten years ago, and I am a warm admirer of Colonel Maceroni’s inventions. My opinion for years has been, and often so expressed, that it is impossible to build an engine sufficiently strong to run even without a load on a common road, year by year, at the rate of fifteen to twenty miles an hour. It would break down. Cold iron at that speed cannot stand the shock of the momentum of a constant fall from stones and ruts of even an inch high.”

Summers and Ogle

Two steam carriages built by Summers and Ogle, in 1831, were among the most successful vehicles of their kind in that day. One of these carriages had two steam cylinders, each seven and one-half inches in diameter and with eighteen-inch stroke. It was mounted on three wheels and its boiler would work at a pressure of two hundred and fifty pounds per square inch. Passengers were carried in the front and the middle of the coach, while the tank and the boiler were behind. The second carriage had three steam cylinders, each four inches in diameter, with a twelve-inch stroke. When the committee of the House of Commons was investigating the subject of steam locomotion on the common roads Summers and Ogle appeared and gave interesting particulars concerning their vehicles. The greatest velocity ever obtained was thirty-two miles an hour. They went from the turnpike gate at Southampton to the four-mile stone on the London road, a continued elevation, with one slight descent, at the rate of twenty-four and a half miles per hour, loaded with people; twenty passengers were often carried. Their first steam carriage ran from Cable Street, Wellclose Square, to within two miles and a half of Basingstoke, when the crank shaft broke, and they were obliged to put the whole machine into a barge on the canal and send it back to London. This same machine had previously run in various directions about the streets and outskirts of London. With their improved carriage they went from Southampton to Birmingham, Liverpool and London, with the greatest success.

The Saturday Magazine, of October 6, 1832, gave an account of one of their trials as follows: “I have just returned from witnessing the triumph of science in mechanics, by traveling along a hilly and crooked road from Oxford to Birmingham in a steam carriage. This truly wonderful machine is the invention of Captain Ogle, of the Royal Navy, and Mr. Summers, his partner, and is the first and only one that has accomplished so long a journey over chance roads, and without rails. Its rate of traveling may be called twelve miles an hour, but twenty or perhaps thirty down hill if not checked by the brake, a contrivance which places the whole of the machinery under complete control. Away went the splendid vehicle through that beauteous city (Oxford) at the rate of ten miles an hour, which, when clear of the houses, was accelerated to fourteen. Just as the steam carriage was entering the town of Birmingham, the supply of coke being exhausted, the steam dropped; and the good people, on learning the cause, flew to the frame, and dragged it into the inn yard.”

Gibbs