Richard Trevithick

In 1797, Richard Trevithick married Jane Harvey, the daughter of famous blacksmith John Harvey. They had six children together: Richard, Anne, Elizabeth, John Harvey, Francis and Frederick Henry.

He died on April 22, 1833 at The Bull hotel, after suffering from pneumonia for week while working in Dartford, with no family member or relative at his deathbed. His body was buried in an unmarked grave in St Edmund's Burial Ground, East Hill, Dartford, with funeral expenses paid by his colleagues.

Richard Trevithick was born on April 13, 1771 in Tregajorran, Cornwall to mining captain Richard Trevithick and his wife Ann Teague, a miner’s daughter. He was the fifth of six children and the only son of his parents.

He attended the village school at Camborne, but was more interested in sports than his studies, except for arithmetic, in which he was able to deduce correct answers by unconventional means.

Despite his lack of interest in academics, Richard Trevithick surprised educated engineers with his extraordinary problem-solving skills and bagged his first job at the age of 19 at the East Stray Park Mine. With his enthusiasm, he was able to reach the rank of a consultant engineer at a young age.

He became interested in experimenting with high-pressure steam engines to replace the commonly used extremely large, low-pressure engines invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712. In 1794, he requested a demonstration from William Murdoch, who had developed a model steam carriage a decade ago, and also lived next-door to him between 1797 and 1798.

After joining as an engineer at the Ding Dong Mine in 1797, he began developing high-pressure steam engines by building a modified version of the low-pressure engine to avoid paying royalties. Nevertheless, James Watt and Matthew Boulton, who had patented the model to improve its efficiency, served an injunction on him to disrupt his experiments.

In 1797, he created 30 full-scale, high-pressure engines for pulling ore from the Cornish mines. Popularly known as the "puffer whims", they were so compact that ordinary farm wagons were able to transport them to the mines.

He next focused on designing a high-pressure steam engine to power locomotives. He built the steam engine in 1801 and named it the 'Puffing Devil'. To demonstrate its capabilities, he took a short successful journey on Christmas Eve that year, carrying six passengers up Camborne Hill, which is widely recognized as the first demonstration of transportation powered by steam.

Richard Trevithick developed one of the first high-pressure steam engines and was the first person to build a full-scale working railway steam locomotive. He also successfully demonstrated the world's first locomotive-hauled railway journey on February 21, 1804, along the tramway of the Penydarren Ironworks, in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales.