[32] John Steele was one of the many "born mechanics" of the Northumberland district. When a boy at Colliery Dykes, his native place, he was noted for his "turn for machinery." He used to take his playfellows home to see and admire his imitations of pit-engines. While a mere youth he lost his leg by an accident; and those who remember him at Whinfield's speak of his hopping about the locomotive, of which he was very proud, upon his wooden leg. It was a great disappointment to him when Mr. Blackett refused to take the engine. One day he took a friend to look at it when reduced to its degraded office of blowing the cupola bellows; and, referring to the cause of its rejection, he observed that he was certain it would succeed, if made sufficiently heavy. "Our master," he continued, "will not be at the expense of following it up; but depend upon it the day will come when such an engine will be fairly tried, and then it will be found to answer." Steele was afterward extensively employed by the British government in raising sunken ships; and later in life he established engine-works at Rouen, where he made marine-engines for the French government. He was unfortunately killed by the explosion of an engine-boiler (with the safety-valve of which something had gone wrong) when on an experimental trip with one of the steamers fitted up by himself, and on his way to England to visit his family near Newcastle. [33] Thomas Gray, a native of Leeds, was an enthusiastic believer in the new tractive power, and wherever he went he preached up railways and Blenkinsop's locomotive. While he was living at Brussels in 1816, a canal to Charleroi was under consideration, on which he seized the opportunity of urging the superior merits of a railway. When he returned to England in 1820, he wrote a book upon the subject, entitled, "Observations on a General Iron Railway," in which he strongly advocated the advantages of railways generally, giving as a frontispiece to the book an engraving of Blenkinsop's engine. And several years after the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway we find Thomas Gray, true to his first love, urging in the "Mechanics' Magazine" the superiority of Blenkinsop's cogged wheel and rail over the smooth road and rail of the modern railway. [34] Other machines with legs were patented in the following year by Lewis Gompertz and by Thomas Tindall. In Tindall's specification it is provided that the power of the engine is to be assisted by a _horizontal windmill_; and the four pushers, or legs, are to be caused to come successively in contact with the ground, and impel the carriage. [35] Mr. Hedley took out a patent to secure his invention, dated the 13th of March, 1813. Specification No. 3666. If it be true, as alleged, that the wheels of Trevithick's first locomotive were smooth, it seems strange that the fallacy should ever have existed.