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
This locomotive had two vertical working steam cylinders, which with the
boiler, condenser, and other details were suspended to a wood frame at the
rear of the carriage. The engineer was seated behind and did his own
firing. The boiler was a series of horizontal water tubes, one and
one-half inches in diameter and two feet long; at each end the flanges
were bolted to the vertical tubes forming the sides of the furnace.
Attached to the wood frame in front of the driving wheels, was a small
water tank, and a force pump supplied the boiler with water. The steam,
passing through the cylinder, went into an air condenser. The power of the
engines was communicated from the piston rods to the driving wheels of the
carriage by sweep rods, the lower ends of which were provided with driving
pinions and detents, which operated upon toothed gear fixed to the hind
carriage axle. The object of this mechanism was to keep the driving
pinions always in gear with the toothed wheels, however the engine and
other machinery might vibrate or the wheels be jolted upon uneven ground.
The boiler, engine, and other working parts were suspended to the wood
frame by chain slings, having strong spiral springs so as to reduce the
vibration from rough roads.
EDMUND CARTWRIGHT
Born at Marnham, Nottinghamshire, England, April 24, 1743. Died at
Hastings, October 30, 1823.
Cartwright was educated at Oxford and secured a living in the English
church. He devoted himself to the ministry and to literature until 1784,
when he became interested in machinery and in the following year invented
the power loom. He took out other patents and also gave some attention to
devising a mechanical carriage propelled by man power. In 1822, he made a
vehicle that was moved by a pair of treadles and cranks worked by the
driver.
Even the steam engine engaged his attention. Some improvements which he
proposed in it are recorded in works on mechanics. While residing at
Eltham, in Lincolnshire, he used frequently to tell his son that, if he
lived to be a man, he would see both ships and land-carriages impelled by
steam. At that early period he constructed a model of a steam engine
attached to a barge, which he explained, about the year 1793, to Robert
Fulton. It appears that even in his old age, only a year before his death,
he was actively engaged in endeavoring to contrive a plan of propelling
land-carriages by steam.
T. BURTSALL
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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