108 
LEWIS EVANS-ADDRESS : 
of Trevethick and Oliver Evans, together with Woolf’s develop¬ 
ment of compounding two cylinders together. Still, it was only 
about the year 1800, and after the many minor improvements of 
Roulton and Watt, that it became generally available for mill 
purposes, with the result that large factories could he established 
in those centres which, owing to abundance of raw material, 
labour, coal, carriage facilities, a local market, or the combination 
of these advantages, were best suited to various manufactures. 
Out of the simple fact of the aggregation of the more intelligent 
workmen and mechanics in large factories arose constant improve¬ 
ments in machinery which have reacted through all branches of 
trade and manufacture. The fuel-consumption of the steam-engine 
gives some idea of the enormous progress which has been made, 
for whereas each horse-power at the beginning of the century 
required 120 lbs. weight of steam, the same work is now done 
by about 12 lbs., and in the same period the pressure of steam 
in general use has gone up from 4 or 5 lbs. per square inch to 
anything between 120 and 250 lbs. 
Probably the steam-engine has most directly assisted progress by 
the facilities it has given to traffic and communication, for until 
steam came to the rescue all travelling was both slow and dangerous. 
It must be remembered that at the beginning of the last century 
the roads in this country were extremely bad and much neglected; 
the use of mail coaches had only been introduced about 15 years, 
and they ran on comparatively few roads at an average speed of 
something like 8 miles an hour. A post-chaise journey even to so 
desirable a destination as Gretna Green was not lightly to be 
undertaken, and a journey from London to Edinburgh occupied 
60 hours. The serious improvement of the roads was not taken 
in hand much before 1823, when a great number of the Turnpike 
Trust Acts were passed. 
The first use of steam-power on a railway dates from 1804, 
when Trevethick successfully applied it on a horse-tramway in 
"Wales, but no important use was made of it until its adoption 
on the Stockton & Darlington Railway, which was opened in 
September, 1825, when a locomotive driven by George Stephenson 
drew a train of 34 vehicles weighing in all 92 tons at frojn 10 
to 15 miles an hour, a signalman on horseback riding in front 
of it. In 1830 the Manchester & Liverpool Railway was opened, 
on which ran Robert Stephenson’s celebrated engine the “ Rocket,” 
the prototype of the modern locomotive, with a tubular boiler, the 
exhaust blast helping the chimney-draught, and a steam-pressure 
of 50 lbs. 
