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Richard Trevithick (13 April 1771 – 22 April 1833) was a British inventor and mining engineer from Cornwall, UK. Born in the mining heartland of Cornwall, Trevithick was immersed in mining and engineering from a young age. The son of a mining captain, he performed poorly in school, but went on to be an early pioneer of steam-powered road and rail transport. His most significant contribution was to the development of the first high-pressure steam engine. He also built the first full-scale working railway steam locomotive in UK. Trevithick also worked as a mining consultant in Peru and later explored parts of Costa Rica. Throughout his professional career, he went through many ups and downs, and at one point faced financial ruin, also suffering from the strong rivalry of many mining and steam engineers of the day. During the prime of his career, he was a well-respected and known figure in mining and engineering, but near the end of his life and after he fell out of the public eye.
Trevithick was the son of mine "captain" Richard Trevithick. As a child he would watch steam engines pump water from the deep tin and copper mines in Cornwall.
Trevithick first went to work at the age of 19 at a mine. He was enthusiastic and quickly gained the status as a consultant, unusual for such a young person. He was popular with the miners because of the respect they had for his father. Trevithick became engineer at the Ding Dong Mine in 1797, and there he pioneered the use of high-pressure 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 steam. He worked on building and modifying steam engines.
The ‘puffing devil’ or ‘Captain Dick’s puffer’ was the first passenger-carrying vehicle powered by steam, made its debut on a road in Cornwall on the nineteenth century’s first Christmas Eve. Cornish mine managers were known as captains and Captain Dick was the prodigious thirty-year-old inventor Richard Trevithick.
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 1808, Trevithick publicized his steam railway locomotive expertise by building a new locomotive called 'Catch me who can', and people could really catch it because it developed only 12 miles per hour (mph). The configuration differed from the previous locomotives in that the cylinder was mounted vertically and drove a pair of wheels directly with the connecting rods, without flywheel or gearing. This was probably Trevithick's fourth locomotive; it ran on a circular track. Admission to the "steam circus" was one shilling including a ride and it was intended to show that rail travel was faster than by horse. This venture also suffered from weak tracks and public interest was limited.
Trevithick was disappointed by the response and designed no more railway locomotives. Trevithick turned to other projects, including an attempt to build a tunnel under the Thames at Rotherhithe. Almost nothing went right and he and his wife and children were reduced to near destitution. In 1816 he sailed for Peru, to install his engines in the silver mines, but the war of independence broke out and South American patriots began destroying his machines. After years of ups and downs, in 1826 he went to Costa Rica, where he proposed to build a railway from the Atlantic across to the Pacific. He was broke and close to starving when he was rescued by Robert Stephenson, who paid for his voyage home to Falmouth. Trevithick, a quick-tempered and impulsive man, was entirely lacking in business sense. His last years were spent in poverty and disappointment and he died at the Bull Inn in Dartford, Kent, in 1833, aged sixty-two.
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