There is nothing left of the original premises, however, a plaque marks its location.
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Richard Trevithick was born at Tregajorran (in the parish of Illogan), between Camborne and Redruth, in the heart of one of the rich mineral mining areas of Cornwall. He was the youngest-but-one child and the only boy in a family of six children. He was very tall for the era at 6 ft 2in, as well as athletic and concentrated more on sport than schoolwork. Sent to the village school at Camborne, he did not take much advantage of the education provided; one of his schoolmasters described him as "a disobedient, slow, obstinate, spoiled boy, frequently absent and very inattentive". An exception was arithmetic, for which he had an aptitude, though arriving at the correct answers by unconventional means.
Trevithick was the son of mine "captain" Richard Trevithick (1735–1797) and of miner's daughter Ann Teague (died 1810). As a child, he would watch steam engines pump water from the deep tin and copper mines in Cornwall. For a time he was a neighbour of William Murdoch, the steam carriage pioneer, and would have been influenced by his experiments with steam-powered road locomotion.
Trevithick first went to work at the age of 19 at the East Stray Park Mine. He was enthusiastic and quickly gained the status of a consultant, unusual for such a young person. He was popular with the miners because of the respect they had for his father.
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Richard Trevithick, invented amongst other things, and perhaps famous for the High-pressure steam engines and the puffing devil the first transportation powered by steam.
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Trevithick became an engineer at the Ding Dong Mine in 1797, and there (in conjunction with Edward Bull) he pioneered the use of high-pressure steam. He worked on building and modifying steam engines to avoid the royalties due to Watt on the separate condenser patent. Boulton & Watt served an injunction on him at Ding Dong, and posted it "on the minestuffs" and "most likely on the door" of the Count (Account) House which, although now a ruin, is the only surviving building from Trevithick's time there.
He also experimented with the plunger-pole pump, a type of pump—with a beam engine—used widely in Cornwall's tin mines, in which he reversed the plunger to change it into a water-power engine.
High-pressure engine
Trevithick's No. 14 engine, built by Hazledine and Company, Bridgnorth, about 1804, and illustrated after being rescued circa 1885; from Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, 3 January 1885. This engine is on view at the Science Museum (London).
As his experience grew, he realised that improvements in boiler technology now permitted the safe production of high-pressure steam, which could move a piston in a steam engine on its own account, instead of using pressure near to atmospheric, in a condensing engine.
He was not the first to think of so-called "strong steam" or steam of about 30 psi. William Murdoch had developed and demonstrated a model steam carriage, initially in 1784, and demonstrated it to Trevithick at his request in 1794. In fact, Trevithick lived next door to Murdoch in Redruth in 1797 and 1798. Oliver Evans in the U.S. had also concerned himself with the concept, but there is no indication that his ideas had ever come to Trevithick's attention.
Independently of this, Arthur Woolf was experimenting with higher pressures whilst working as the Chief Engineer of the Griffin Brewery (proprietors Meux and Reid). This was an Engine designed by Hornblower and Maberly, and the proprietors were keen to have the best steam engine in London. Around 1796, Woolf believed he could save substantial amounts of coal consumption.
According to his son Francis, Trevithick was the first to make high-pressure steam work in England in 1799, although other sources say he had invented his first high-pressure engine by 1797.Not only would a high-pressure steam engine eliminate the condenser, but it would allow the use of a smaller cylinder, saving space and weight. He reasoned that his engine could now be more compact, lighter, and small enough to carry its own weight even with a carriage attached. (Note this did not use the expansion of the steam, so-called "expansive working" came later)
Early experiments
Trevithick began building his first models of high-pressure (meaning a few atmospheres) steam engines - first a stationary one and subsequently one attached to a road carriage. A double-acting cylinder was used, with steam distribution by means of a four-way valve. Exhaust steam was vented via a vertical pipe or chimney straight into the atmosphere, thus avoiding a condenser and any possible infringements of Watt's patent. The linear motion was directly converted into circular motion via a crank instead of using a more cumbersome beam.
Puffing Devil
Camborne Hill street name and plaque commemorating Trevithick's steam carriage demonstration in 1801.
A replica of Trevithick's Puffing Devil, built by the Trevithick Society and regularly demonstrated in Cornwall
Trevithick built a full-size steam road locomotive in 1801, on a site near present-day Fore Street in Camborne. (A steam wagon built in 1770 by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot may have an earlier claim.) Trevithick named his carriage Puffing Devil and on Christmas Eve that year, he demonstrated it by successfully carrying six passengers up Fore Street and then continuing on up Camborne Hill, from Camborne Cross, to the nearby village of Beacon. His cousin and associate, Andrew Vivian, steered the machine. This is widely recognised as the first demonstration of transportation powered by steam. It inspired the popular Cornish folk song "Camborne Hill".
During further tests, Trevithick's locomotive broke down three days later after passing over a gully in the road. The vehicle was left under some shelter with the fire still burning whilst the operators retired to a nearby public house for a meal of roast goose and drinks. Meanwhile, the water boiled off, the engine overheated and the machine burned, destroying it. Trevithick did not consider this a serious setback, but rather operator error.
In 1802, Trevithick took out a patent for his high-pressure steam engine. To prove his ideas, he built a stationary engine at the Coalbrookdale Company's works in Shropshire in 1802, forcing water to a measured height to measure the work done. The engine ran at forty piston strokes a minute, with an unprecedented boiler pressure of 145 psi.
Coalbrookdale Locomotive
A drawing of the Coalbrookdale locomotive from the Science Museum
In 1802, the Coalbrookdale company built a rail locomotive for him[14], but little is known about it, including whether or not it actually ran. To date, the only known information about it comes from a drawing preserved at the Science Museum, London, together with a letter written by Trevithick to his friend Davies Giddy. The design incorporated a single horizontal cylinder enclosed in a return-flue boiler. A flywheel drove the wheels on one side through spur gears, and the axles were mounted directly on the boiler, with no frame. On the drawing, the piston-rod, guide-bars and cross-head are located directly above the firebox door, thus making the engine extremely dangerous to fire while moving.[16] Furthermore, the drawing indicates that the locomotive ran on a plateway with a track gauge of 3 ft (914 mm).
This is the drawing used as the basis of all images and replicas of the later "Pen-y-darren" locomotive, as no plans for that locomotive have survived.
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