EARLY STEAM CARRIAGES.
Stuart, in his “Historical and Descriptive Anecdotes of Steam Engines and of their Inventors and Improvers,” gives a description of what was supposed to be the first model of a steam carriage. The constructor was a Frenchman named Cugnot, who exhibited it before the Marshal de Saxe in 1763. He afterwards built an engine on the same model at the cost of the French monarch. But when set in motion it projected itself onward with such force that it knocked down a wall which stood in its way, and—its power being considered too great for ordinary use—it was put aside as being a dangerous machine, and was stowed away in the Arsenal Museum at Paris. It is now to be seen in the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers.
Mr. Smiles also remarks that “An American inventor, named Oliver Evans, was also occupied with the same idea, for, in 1772, he invented a steam carriage to travel on common roads; and, in 1787, he obtained from the State of Maryland the exclusive right to make and use steam carriages. The invention, however, never came into practical use.
“It also appears that, in 1784, William Symington, the inventor of the steamboat, conceived the idea of employing steam power in the propulsion of carriages; and, in 1786, he had a working model of a steam carriage constructed which he submitted to the professors and other scientific gentlemen of Edinburgh. But the state of the Scotch roads was at that time so horrible that he considered it impracticable to proceed further with his scheme, and he shortly gave it up in favour of his project of steam navigation.
“The first English model of a steam carriage was made in 1784 by William Murdoch, the friend and assistant of Watt. It was on the high-pressure principle and ran on three wheels. The boiler was heated by a spirit lamp, and the whole machine was of very diminutive dimensions, standing little more than a foot high. Yet, on one occasion, the little engine went so fast that it outran the speed of the inventor. Mr. Buckle says that one night after returning from his duties in the mine at Redruth, in Cornwall, Murdoch determined to try the working of his model locomotive.
For this purpose he had recourse to the walk leading to the church, about a mile from the town. The walk was rather narrow and was bounded on either side by high hedges. It was a dark night, and Murdoch set out alone to try his experiment. Having lit his lamp, the water shortly began to boil, and off started the engine with the inventor after it. He soon heard distant shouts of despair. It was too dark to perceive objects, but he shortly found, on following up the machine, that the cries for assistance proceeded from the worthy pastor of the parish, who, going towards the town on business, was met on this lonely road by the hissing and fiery little monster, which he subsequently declared he had taken to be the Evil One in propriâ personâ. No further steps, however, were taken by Murdoch to embody his idea of a locomotive carriage in a more practical form.”
FIRST RAILWAY BILL.
The first Railway Bill passed by Parliament was for a line from Wandsworth to Croydon, in 1801, but a quarter of a century elapsed before the first line was actually constructed for carrying passengers between Stockton and Darlington. People still living can remember the mail coaches that plied once a month between Edinburgh and London, making the journey in twelve or fourteen days. The Annual Register of 1820 boasts that “English mail coaches run 7 miles an hour; French only 4½ miles; the former travelling, in the year, forty times the length of miles that the French accomplish.” These coaches were a great improvement on the previous method of sending the mails. In 1783 a petition to Parliament stated that “the mails are generally entrusted to some idle boy, without character, mounted on a worn-out hack.”
“Progress of the World” by M. G. Mulhall.