Automobile Biographies: An Account of the Lives and the Work of Those Who Have Been Identified with the Invention and Development of Self-Propelled Vehicles on the Common RoadsWeeks, Lyman Horace
History
Automobile Biographies: An Account of the Lives and the Work of Those Who Have Been Identified with the Invention and Development of Self-Propelled Vehicles on the Common Roads
Weeks, Lyman Horace
Automobiles -- History
About 1780, Dallery made a steam vehicle with a multi-tubular boiler which
he claimed was an original invention of his own. This vehicle was run in
Amiens and in 1790 was seen on the streets of Paris. In March, 1803, he
secured a patent on the tubular boiler for use on his steamboat, or on his
steam carriage. This vehicle was a boat-shaped wagon, driven by a steam
engine.
JAMES WATT
Born at Greenock, Scotland, January 19, 1736. Died at Birmingham,
Staffordshire, England, August 25, 1819.
Watt came of a respectable and industrious family. His grandfather was a
professor of mathematics, while his father was an instrument maker,
councillor and manufacturer. After a limited education young Watt went to
London, in 1755, and became a mathematical and nautical instrument maker.
In that capacity he became connected with Glasgow University, and there
made his discoveries that resulted in the practical improvements in the
steam engine which made him famous. He was associated with Matthew
Boulton, under the firm name of Boulton & Watt, from 1774 to 1800, and the
Watt engines that were built by that concern at Soho revolutionized
England's mining industries. His steam engines represented a great step
beyond the Newcomen engines, though still using low-pressure steam.
Watt's connection with steam carriages for use on the common roads, a
subject that was of much moment in his day, was limited to a single patent
and generally to discouraging the plans of others in that direction, owing
to his fear that the introduction of high-pressure steam use would harm
the engine business. In the patent granted to him in 1784 he proposed that
the boiler of his carriage should be made of wooden staves, fastened with
iron hoops, like a cask, and the furnace to be of iron, and placed in the
inside of the boiler, surrounded with water.
Watt, however, never built the steam carriage. He retained the deepest
prejudices against the use of high-pressure steam, saying: "I soon
relinquished the idea of constructing an engine on this principle; from
being sensible it would be liable to some of the objections against
Savery's engine, viz., the danger of bursting the boiler, and also that a
great part of the power of the steam would be lost, because no vacuum was
formed to assist the descent of the piston."
ROBERT FOURNESS
Born in Otley, Yorkshire, England. Died at an early age.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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