West Country engine builders- Newcomen and Trevithick

 The West Country, Cornwall in particular, was where deep mines were first sunk, in search of metals rather than coal. The problem with depth was the water table which meant that mines would flood. To begin with, pumps were powered by animals or water and windmills. Something more powerful was needed and in stepped first Savery and then Newcomen.

Thomas Newcomen was born in Dartmouth in 1663. He became an iron monger, the title given to anyone making and selling iron goods. Some of his customers were quite probably Cornish tin miners and he saw at first hand the challenge presented by flooding. He would probably have seen the crude pump produced by Thomas Savery, a fellow Devonian, which had been nicknamed the 'miner's friend'.

In 1712, Thomas Newcomen made the vital breakthrough of the invention of the atmospheric steam powered pump which meant that mines could go even deeper. The Newcomen engine did not rotate in the way we think of steam engines on railways for example; it was static and relied on the production of a vacuum, under a piston sliding in the cylinder, to raise the water using atmospheric pressure. We can visualise this by thinking of some of the massive beam engines that have been preserved. These engines were soon employed in many mines.

Newcomen's engine relied upon atmospheric pressure and the cooling of the piston between strokes. James Watt made the vital step forward by adding a separate condenser meaning that the piston had no need to cool, thereby saving fuel.

Richard Trevithick was born near Camborne in Cornwall in 1771 just two years after Watt's invention of the condenser. His father, also Richard, was a mine 'captain', that is the mine's manager whose responsibilities included pumps which would have comprised some Newcomen and an increasing number of the more efficient Watt versions. Either way they were all beam engines. The young Richard had attended the local school but excelled neither in ability or enthusiasm; Richard loved the mines and their machines. He was an engaging man and physically extremely strong. As I tell in my blog on Camborne, the Cornish mine owners resented the need to pay Watt royalties for his invention and so many sought ways round the use of the condenser. It was Richard who found it in the 'high pressure' engine.

At the age of only nineteen, Richard was working with pumps in Cornish mines and was discovering improvements. These led him to London and the patent office where he met Davies Gilbert, a scientist, who would become a lifelong friend and collaborator. It was to Gilbert he took his invention of the high pressure engine, but it was Gilbert who found that the engine could power a locomotive on land. The issue was whether wheels would slip; Gilbert believed that friction would largely prevent this. Consequently Trevithick built at Camborne a locomotive powered by his high pressure engine in 1801; it was the first such in the world. A successor engine was tried on iron rails at Penydaren in South Wales in 1804 and a further version was on public display in London in 1808.

For Trevithick this was but a part of his prodigious output. He was also boring brass cannon, crushing stone, powering the bellows of blast furnaces, rolling mills and forge hammers. He adapted his engine to power the paddle wheels of a barge. I wrote of the Thames Tunnel in relation to Brunel. Trevithick was one of those first attempted the project. Although he didn't succeed he left the legacy of the idea of tunnelling using iron cylinder sections. In relation to steam engines he invented the Cornish boiler and building on this the Cornish engine. In both cases he continued to pursue the goal of efficiency.

In 1816 Trevithick sailed for Peru where miners were finding that atmospheric engines didn't work at altitude. The time he spent in South America although eventful was not productive and in 1827 he returned to Cornwall a poor man. He was as inventive as ever but the world had moved on. Stephenson's Rocket was soon to set the standard for steam locomotives. Other engineers were becoming more businesslike. Trevithick's final project was the design of a 1,000 ft iron tower to mark the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832. Sadly it was never built. Richard died at Dartford on 22 April 1833. His widow who had supported him through thick and thin survived him by therty years.

Further reading:

James Hodge, Richard Trevithick (Princess Risborough: Shire Publications, 1973)