Part 5 (1/2)
Asda sold the carriage and the patent for a large sum of money, and swindled Maceroni out of all his share. For years the inventor was in the direst extremes of poverty. In 1841 he succeeded in securing the support of The General Steam Carriage Company to construct and run carriages under his patent. Disagreement between the directors and the manufacturing engineer again brought to Maceroni disaster, from which he was never able to recover.
RICHARD ROBERTS
Born in 1789. Died in March, 1864.
Roberts was best known as a Manchester, England, engineer, of the firm of Sharp, Roberts & Co. He built a steam road locomotive that was first tried in December, 1833. Three months later the machine was subjected to a second trial. The carriage went out under the guidance of Mr. Roberts, with forty pa.s.sengers. It proceeded about a mile and a half, made a difficult turn where the road was narrow, and returned to the works without accident. The maximum speed on the level was nearly twenty miles an hour. Hills were mounted easily. No doubt existed of the engine being speedily put in complete and effective condition for actual service.
During another experimental trip in April of the same year, the locomotive met with an accident caused by some of the boiler tubes giving way, allowing the steam to escape and the fuel to be scattered about. No one was seriously injured, and none of the pa.s.sengers was hurt.
Roberts invented the compensating gear that he first used on his steam carriage. This gear superseded claw clutches, friction bands, ratchet-wheels, and other arrangements for obtaining the full power of both the driving-wheels, and at the same time allowing for the engine to turn the sharpest corner. In 1839, Roberts invented an arrangement for communicating power to both driving-wheels at all times, whether turning to the right or left. During the latter years of his life this famous engineer lived in exceedingly straitened circ.u.mstances, and he died in poverty.
JOHN SCOTT RUSSELL
Born at Parkhead, near Glasgow, Scotland, May 8, 1808. Died June 8, 1882, at Ventnor.
The father of John Scott Russell was David Russell, a Scottish clergyman, and the son was originally intended for the church. His mind was more inclined toward mechanics than theology, and he entered a workshop in order to learn the trade of engineering. Studying at the Universities of Edinburgh, St. Andrews and Glasgow, he was graduated from Glasgow when he was sixteen years of age. In 1832, upon the death of Sir John Leslie, Professor of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh University, Russell was elected to fill the vacancy temporarily. Shortly after that he began his celebrated investigations into the nature of the sea waves, as a preliminary study to improving the forms of s.h.i.+ps. As a result of these researches he developed the wave-line system for the construction of vessels. In 1837 he received a gold medal of the Royal Society of Engineers, and was elected a member of the Council of that Society for a paper that he read ”on the laws by which water opposes resistance to the motion of floating bodies.” At that time he was manager of the s.h.i.+pbuilding words at Greenock, and under his supervision and according to his designs several s.h.i.+ps were built with lines based on his wave system.
Among these were four of the new fleet of the West India Mail Company.
Russell removed to London in 1844, and became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1847. He was vice-president of the Inst.i.tute of Civil Engineers and secretary of the Society of Arts. For many years he was a s.h.i.+pbuilder on the Thames, and supervised the construction of the celebrated steams.h.i.+p Great Eastern. He was one of the promoters and vice-president of the Inst.i.tute of Naval Architects, and a pioneer in advocating the construction of iron-clad men-of-war. He published many papers, princ.i.p.ally upon naval architecture.
It was while he was residing in Edinburgh that he took out a patent for a steam locomotive to be used on the common roads. The boiler that he invented was multi-tubular, with the furnace and the return tubes on the same level, and similar to a marine boiler. The boiler everywhere consisted of opposite and parallel surfaces, and these surfaces were connected by stays of small diameter. The copper plates of the boiler were only one-tenth of an inch thick. When put to actual test the weakness of the boiler thus constructed was fully demonstrated.
The engine had two vertical cylinders, twelve inches in diameter and with twelve inches stroke. The engine was mounted upon laminated springs, arranged so that each spring in its flexure described, at a particular point, such a circle as was also described by the main axle in its motion round the crank shaft. This arrangement was intended to correct any irregularities in the road so that they would not interfere with the proper working of the spur gearing. Exhaust steam was turned into the chimney to create a blast. Water and c.o.ke were carried on a separate tender on two wheels, coupled to the rear of the engine. Spare tenders, filled, were kept in readiness at different stations on the road. These tenders, mounted upon springs, had seats back and front for pa.s.sengers. To work the locomotive three persons were required, a steersman on the front seat, an engineer on the back seat outside above the engines, and a fireman stationed on the footplate in front of the boiler.
On the order of the Steam Carriage Company, of Scotland, six of these coaches were built by the Grove House Engine Works, of Edinburgh. They were substantially constructed and very elaborately fitted up. As was said at the time, they were ”in the style and with all the comfort and elegance of the most costly gentleman's carriage.” They ran very successfully for some time, during 1834, between St. George's Square, Glasgow, and Paisley.
There was a service of six coaches once an hour. Each carriage accommodated six pa.s.sengers inside and twenty outside, and sometimes drew, in addition, a dogcart laden with six pa.s.sengers, and the necessary fuel and water. These dogcarts were used as relays on the road, being kept ready constantly. Public opposition to these coaches developed here as it had done in London about the same period. Road trustees objected to them on the ground that they wore out the roads too rapidly. Obstructions of stones, logs of wood, and other things were placed in their way, but the coaches generally went on in spite of these. Ordinary horse-drawn road carriages were more damaged and hindered than the Russell coaches, and even heavy carts were compelled to abandon travel on the obstructed roads and take roundabout courses, greatly to the discomfiture of the drivers.
One day, however, a heavy strain, unusually severe, caused by jolting over the rough road, broke a wheel, and the weight of the coach falling on the boiler caused an explosion. Five persons were killed, and as a result of this accident the Court of Session interdicted the further travel of these carriages in Scotland. The Steam Carriage Company brought an action for damages against the trustees of the turnpike road for having compelled them to withdraw the carriages from the Glasgow and Paisley road by ”wantonly, wrongfully and maliciously acc.u.mulating ma.s.ses of metal, stones and rubbish on the said road, in order to create such annoyance and obstruction as might impede, overturn, or destroy the steam coaches belonging to the plaintiffs,” but nothing seems to have come of this action.
No longer used in Scotland, two of Russell's coaches were sent to London.
There they were engaged in running with pa.s.sengers between London and Greenwich, or Kew Bridge. Several trips were made to Windsor. After about a year they were offered for sale, and, on exhibition preparatory to sale, they started every day from Hyde Park Corner to make a journey to Hammersmith. But they remained unsold, and were shortly forgotten.
Had conditions been more encouraging Russell might have achieved as great success in his land as in his water vehicles. He was a man of rare scientific attainments, and his work in s.h.i.+p designing and building put him in the front rank of naval architects and builders of his day. In addition to his work, already mentioned, he built a big steamer to transport railway trains across Lake Constance.
W. H. CHURCH
A physician of Birmingham, England, Dr. W. H. Church gave many years to the study of steam locomotion. Several patents were secured by him between 1832 and 1835, and in the latter year a common road carriage, built according to his plans, was brought out.
The Church vehicle had a framework of united iron plates or bars, bolted on each side of the woodwork to obtain strength. Well trussed and braced, this framework enclosed a s.p.a.ce between a hind and fore body of the carriage, and of the same height as the latter, and contained the engine, boiler, and other machinery. The boiler consisted of a series of vertical tubes, placed side by side, through each of which a pipe pa.s.sed, and was secured at the bottom of the boiler tube; the interior pipe const.i.tuted the flue, which first pa.s.sed in through a boiler tube, and was then bent like a syphon, and pa.s.sed down another until it reached as low or lower than the bottom of the fireplace, whence it pa.s.sed off into a general flue in communication with an exhausting apparatus. Two fans were employed, one to blow in air, and the other to draw it out; they were worked by straps from the crank shaft. The wheels of the carriage were constructed with the view to rendering them elastic, to a certain degree, in two different ways: First, the felloes were made of several successive layers of broad wooden hoops, covered with a thin iron tire, having lateral straps to bind the hoops together; second, these binding straps were connected by hinge joints to a kind of flat steel springs, somewhat curved, which formed the spokes of the wheels. These spring spokes were intended to obviate the necessity, in a great measure, of the ordinary springs, and the elasticity of the periphery was designed so that the yielding of the circle should prevent the wheel from turning without propelling.
Church also proposed, in addition to spring felloes, spring spokes, and the ordinary springs, to employ air springs, and for that purpose provided two or more cylinders, made fast to the body of the carriage, in a vertical position, closed at top, and furnished with a piston, with packing similar to the cap-leather packing of the hydraulic press. This piston was kept covered with oil, to preserve it in good order, and a piston rod connected it with the supporting frame of the carriage. Motion was communicated by two oscillating steam cylinders suspended on the steam and exhaust pipes over the crank shaft. The crank shaft and driving-wheel axle were connected by means of chains pa.s.sing about pitched pulleys.
To introduce the Church coach, the London and Birmingham Steam Carriage Company was organized. The first carriage built for the company was an imposing vehicle, something like a big circus van, elaborately ornamented and with a large spheroidal wheel in front. It carried about forty pa.s.sengers on top, in omnibus fas.h.i.+on, and the driver sat on a raised seat near the roof. A fair rate of speed was maintained, fifteen miles on the level, but the boiler was damaged, and horses hauled the engine back to the factory. Other carriages were subsequently brought out, but they all failed to meet the requirements of travel on the rough roads that existed at that time in England.
JEAN JOSEPH ETIENNE LENOIR