84 HER OES OF INVENTION AND DISCO VER Y. 



sail of a windmill. This little wheel turned another with an 

 axle-tree, and by that means the waggon was set a-running for 

 two hours together. This description is rather that of a hot-air 

 engine than a steam-engine, but it was a locomotive, and is the 

 earliest of its race. 



In the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers in Paris is preserved 

 the steam-carriage constructed by M. Cugnot in 1763, which 

 was a remarkable machine, like a long brewer's cart, with a 

 boiler and engine at one end. It went with such force that it 

 knocked down a wall, and its power was in consequence con- 

 sidered too great for ordinary use, and it was put aside as a 

 dangerous invention. 



A model of a steam-carriage was made in 1784 by William 

 Murdoch, the friend and assistant of Watt, but it was of very 

 diminutive proportions. 



The suggestion for such an application of steam had been 

 made by Dr. Robison, of Edinburgh, in 1759, to James Watt, 

 who included the idea in his fourth patent, but seems to have 

 doubted the safety of the carriage. He mentioned the idea to 

 Murdoch, who proved practically, on a small scale, the correct- 

 ness of the calculations that had been made. Of Murdoch's 

 machine, it is narrated that on a dark night in the year named, 

 the venerable clergyman of Redruth, in Cornwall, when 

 walking' in a lonely lane leading to his church, heard a most 

 unearthly noise, and beheld approaching him, at great speed, 

 an indescribable creature, glowing with internal fires, and whose 

 gasps for breath seemed to denote some internal struggle of a 

 deadly kind. His cries brought the inventor, William Murdoch, 

 to his side, who explained to him that this terrible monster was 

 nothing more or less than a locomotive he had invented, and 

 which had broken away from his control. 



