“was then no despicable vehicle for country gentlemen. The first day, with much labour, we got from Chester to Whitchurch, twenty miles; the second day to the Welsh Harp; the third to Coventry; the fourth to Northampton; the fifth to Dunstable; and as a wondrous effort on the last, to London, before the commencement of night. The strain and labour of six good horses, sometimes eight, drew us through the sloughs of Mireden and many other places.”
TRAVELLING POSTING CARRIAGE, 1750.
THE APPLICATION OF SPRINGS.
In the year 1768 Dr. R. Lovell Edgeworth, who had devoted much attention to the subject, and had made numerous experiments,[19] succeeded in demonstrating that springs were as advantageous to the horses of, as to the passengers in a coach; and he constructed a carriage for which the Society of English Arts and Manufactures awarded him three gold medals. In this conveyance the axletrees were divided and the motion of each wheel was relieved by a spring. Just one dozen patents for springs were granted during the eighteenth century, and it is impossible to say which invention had most influence on methods of building coaches. In 1772 a patent was granted to James Butler for a new coach-wheel the spokes of which were constructed of springs; but this curious contrivance is mentioned nowhere—so far as the writer’s investigations have shown—but in the Patent Office files, whence we may conclude it was a failure.
[19] An Essay on the Construction of Roads and Carriages. London, 1817.
TRAVELLING POSTING CARRIAGE, 1750.