Richard Dudgeon 



In New York, in about 1867, Richard Dudgeon built a 

 steam-powered carriage capable of carrying 10 persons. It 

 ran on four solid wooden wheels, the two rear ones con- 

 nected to steam cylinders mounted at the front of the hori- 

 zontal boiler, on each side. Veritably a "road locomotive," 

 it differed from a rail locomotive in having its wheels un- 

 flanged and its front axle pivoted for steering. 



This vehicle (fig. 5) is probably the earliest surviving 

 self-propelled road conveyance in America. Still in good 

 operable condition, it is the oldest specimen in the private 

 collection of George H. Waterman and Kirkland Gibson 

 at East Greenwich, R. I. It is currently to be seen at the 

 Antique Auto Museum of Massachusetts, at Larz Ander- 

 son Park in Brookline, Mass., where it is on loan to the Vet- 

 eran Motor Car Club of America. An earlier Dudgeon 

 steamer was built in about 1853, but was destroyed in the 

 Crystal Palace fire in New York City in 1858. 



Figure 5. — Richard Dudgeon's steam vehicle of about 1867, as it appeared in 

 an 1 870 catalog of the Dudgeon Co., manufacturers of machinery. In this 

 catalog Dudgeon reports that he had made two steam carriages, the first 17 

 years and the other only 4 years prior to the date of the catalog (the first was 

 destroyed in the fire that consumed New York's Crystal Palace in 1 858). He 

 adds that the latter, of which this is the catalog illustration, was in perfect order 

 after having run hundreds of miles on almost every kind of road. Dudgeon 

 states, nevertheless, that after 17 years of effort, and despite his conviction of 

 the utility of such a machine, he had learned that it was not fashionable, or 

 that people were not ready for it. 



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