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on February 21, 1804, in the presence of Homfray, Crawshay, and a government engineer who had come to observe. Trevithick wrote to a friend the next day, “We carried ten tons of iron in five wagons, and seventy men riding on them the whole of the journey … The gentleman that bet 500 guineas against it rode the whole of the journey with us, and is s
... See moreTom Standage • A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next
Car
We have sought power in the same fire which serves to keep the vessel afloat. The first which presented itself to our imagination is the power of reaction, which can be applied without any mechanism, and without expense: it consists solely in one or more openings in the vessel on the side opposite to that in which one wishes to be conveyed.
Edmund Scot who came aboard from the Bantam factory. His ‘extraordinarie
John Keay • The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
The first attempt to build a steam-powered vehicle seems to have been made by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot, a French inventor, who built a steam wagon to pull artillery for the French army in 1769.
Tom Standage • A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next
ton of steel in every eight yards of track—drained
Neal Stephenson • Polostan: Volume One of Bomb Light: A Riveting Historical Epic of International Espionage, Intrigue, and the Dawn of the Atomic Age, by the #1 New York Times Bestselling Author
The stationary steam engine constructed by the English inventor Thomas Newcomen in 1712, building on the work of previous experimenters, was used to pump water out of flooded coal mines. Early steam engines were large (Newcomen engines were typically housed in buildings three stories tall) and inefficient, but this did not matter much because they
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