1 78 president's addkess. 



engineer, was employed, receiving I /o per day as a carpenter. 

 Eicliard Trevithick, senior, died I 797, but before that time his 

 son Richard Trevithick, the celebrated engineer, had already come 

 into prominence. He, like Hornblower, found a patron and friend 

 in Mr Davies Griddy, whose grandson, Mr. J. D. Enys, possesses 

 the original drawing of one of his water-power engines erected 

 in 1799. At about that time Trevithick turned his attention to 

 using high- pressure steam without condensation and in 1 800 

 made several high-pressure portable engines and erected a high- 

 pressure steam whim. In the following year he constructed at 

 Camborne a locomotive that was able to carry several persons. 

 In the Christmas of that year i 80 1 , he joined in partnership with 

 Capt. A. Vivian and on 16 January, 1802, having come up to 

 London to secure a patent for their locomotive and other high- 

 pressure engines, wrote to Mr. Davies Giddy giving an account of 

 an interview with Count Romford, F.R.S , who with Sir Humphrey 

 Davy and Mr. Davies Griddy assisted them in preparing their 

 specilications for the patent which they obtained in that year 

 1802. The drawings and descriptions are very clear but it was 

 almost impossible at that time to manufacture a suitable wrought- 

 iron boiler, the largest piece of wrought-iron plate procurable 

 being about three or four feet long and a foot wide. Trevithick 

 was therefore frequently forced to fall back upon cast iron boilers 

 strengthened with wrought-iron. In a report of a select com- 

 mittee of the house of commons apj)ointed in May, 1817, to 

 enquire into the use and safety of Trevithick high-pressure marine 

 engines, the evidence shewed the cause of a recent steam-boat 

 explosion to have been a deficiency in the strength of the end of 

 the boiler, which was of cast-iron, but appeared to have been 

 previously of wrought-iron which had been cut and cast-iron 

 substituted. The report adds " and further a great majority of 

 opinions leans to boilers of wrought-iron or metal in preference 

 to cast-iron." Still as early as 1804 Trevithick made a locomo- 

 tive with steam blast in the chimney which drew ten tons on a 

 tramway at the rate of nearly 4 miles an hour for nearly ten miles 

 partly up a considerable incline.'* This is considered the first 



* I am, by the courtesy of Mr. J. D. Enys, enabled to give the accompan3'ing 

 illustration of Trcvithick's engine, which the sister of Mr. Davies Gilbert named 

 " Catch me who can," and in her memorandum says " My ride with Trevithick in 

 the year i8o8, in an open carriage, propelled by the steam engine of which the enclosed 

 is a print, took place on a waste piece, now Torxington Square." 



