The Life of George Stephenson and of his Son Robert Stephenson: Comprising Also a History of the Invention and Introduction of the Railway LocomotiveSmiles, Samuel
History
The Life of George Stephenson and of his Son Robert Stephenson: Comprising Also a History of the Invention and Introduction of the Railway Locomotive
[69] The arguments used by Mr. Stephenson with the directors in favor
of the locomotive engine were afterward collected and published in 1830
by Robert Stephenson and Joseph Locke, as "compiled from the Reports of
Mr. George Stephenson." The pamphlet was entitled "Observations on the
Comparative Merits of Locomotive and Fixed Engines." Robert Stephenson,
speaking of the authorship many years after, said, "I believe I
furnished the facts and the arguments, and Locke put them into shape.
Locke was a very flowery writer, whereas my style was rather bald and
unattractive; so he was the editor of the pamphlet, which excited a
good deal of attention among engineers at the time."
[70] The conditions were these:
1. The engine must effectually consume its own smoke.
2. The engine, if of six tons' weight, must be able to draw after it,
day by day, twenty tons' weight (including the tender and water-tank)
at ten miles an hour, with a pressure of steam on the boiler not
exceeding fifty pounds to the square inch.
3. The boiler must have two safety valves, neither of which must be
fastened down, and one of them be completely out of the control of the
engine-man.
4. The engine and boiler must be supported on springs, and rest on six
wheels, the height of the whole not exceeding fifteen feet to the top
of the chimney.
5. The engine, with water, must not weigh more than six tons; but an
engine of less weight would be preferred on its drawing a proportionate
load behind it; if of only four and a half tons, then it might be put
on only four wheels. The company to be at liberty to test the boiler,
etc., by a pressure of one hundred and fifty pounds to the square inch.
6. A mercurial gauge must be affixed to the machine, showing the steam
pressure above forty-five pounds per square inch.
7. The engine must be delivered, complete and ready for trial, at the
Liverpool end of the railway, not later than the 1st of October, 1829.
8. The price of the engine must not exceed £550.
Many persons of influence declared the conditions published by the
directors of the railway chimerical in the extreme. One gentleman of
some eminence in Liverpool, Mr. P. Ewart, who afterward filled the
office of Government Inspector of Post-office Steam Packets, declared
that only a parcel of charlatans would ever have issued such a set
of conditions; that it had been _proved_ to be impossible to make a
locomotive engine go at ten miles an hour; but if it ever was done, he
would undertake to eat a stewed engine-wheel for his breakfast!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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