Cornish Worthies: Sketches of Some Eminent Cornish Men and Families, Volume 2 (of 2)Tregellas, Walter H. (Walter Hawken)
History
Cornish Worthies: Sketches of Some Eminent Cornish Men and Families, Volume 2 (of 2)
Tregellas, Walter H. (Walter Hawken)
Cornwall (England : County) -- Biography
The _Quarterly Review_ for October, 1867, has an article on 'George
Stephenson and Locomotion,' in which George Stephenson is described as
'the father of railway locomotion;' and yet two pages after (p. 499)
the writer of the article mentions, with greater accuracy, Richard
Trevithick (or, as he spells it, 'Trevethick') as 'the first who put
together the two ideas of the steam horse and the iron way.' Alas for
our Cornishman! such is fame! It has been shown above that Trevithick
not only first put together the steam horse and the iron way, but that
he first worked the steam horse on the turnpike road; and to _him_
therefore is due the chief credit for there being 'not a line or a
locomotive which does not bear testimony to his genius, his sagacity,
and his perseverance; nor is there a traveller upon a railway, who
saves time, money, fatigue and anxiety ... who has not reason to think
of _Richard Trevithick_ with gratitude for the benefits which he has
conferred, and with admiration for the intellectual triumphs which he
achieved.'
Fortunate it was for him that he was a remarkably good-tempered man,
most simple and frugal in his habits, and richly endowed with that
'friend of the brave'--Hope!
His freedom from debt and imprisonment seems to have been at length
due to the sale of one of his patents for iron tanks (for ships) and
iron buoys, to Mr. Maudslay, founder of the now eminent firm of London
engineers of that name. Trevithick had pressed his proposals on the
Admiralty for a long time in vain; and at last, with characteristic
impetuosity, settled the matter for ever, it is said, by calling the
Navy Board to their faces 'a lot of old women.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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