Automobile Biographies Part 9

WILLIAM BRUNTON

Born at Dalkeith, Scotland, May 26, 1777. Died at Camborne, Cornwall, England, October 5, 1857.

The eldest son of Robert Brunton, a watch and clock maker, William Brunton studied mechanics first in his father's shop and then in England, under the guidance of his grandfather, who was a colliery viewer. When he was thirteen years of age, in 1790, he began work in the fitting shops of the New Lanark cotton mills of David Dale and Richard Arkwright. Remaining in that establishment for six years he then went to the Boulton & Watt shops, at Soho, where he was gradually promoted, until he finally became the foreman and superintendent of engine manufacturing.

In 1813, he went to the Jessop's b.u.t.terley Works, but remained there only three years, when he became a partner and mechanical manager of the Eagle Foundry, at Birmingham, a connection that he maintained for ten years.

From 1825 to 1835, he was engaged in the practice of civil engineering in London. In the last-mentioned year, he became a share owner in the Cwm Avom tin works in Glamorganshire, Wales, where he superintended the erection of copper-smelting furnaces and rolling mills. He was also connected with the Maesteg Works in the same county and a brewery at Neath. Through the failure of these enterprises he lost the savings of his lifetime and was never again engaged actively in business. He invented many ingenious modes of reducing and manufacturing metals; made some of the original engines used on the Humber and the Trent and also some of the earliest that were seen on the Mersey, including those four vessels first operated on the Liverpool ferries in 1814. He also invented the calciner that was put in use in the tin mines at Cornwall and the silver ore works in Mexico.

Like nearly all the other engineers of his day, Brunton planned a steam carriage. This was built when he was at the b.u.t.terley Works, in 1813, and was called "the mechanical traveller." Although a peculiar machine it worked with some degree of success, at a gradient of one in thirty-six, all the winter of 1814, at the Newbottle Colliery. The machine was a steam horse rather than a steam carriage. It consisted of a curious combination of levers, the action of which nearly resembled that of the legs of a man in walking, with feet alternately made to press against the ground of the road or railway, and in such a manner as to adapt themselves to the various inclinations or inequalities of the surface. The feet were of various forms, the great object being to prevent them from injuring the road, and to obtain a firm footing, so that no jerks should take place at the return of the stroke, when the action of the engine came upon them; for this purpose they were made broad, with short spikes to lay hold of the ground. The boiler was a cylinder of wrought iron, five feet six inches long, three feet in diameter, and of such strength as to be capable of sustaining a pressure of upwards of four hundred pounds per square inch. The working cylinder was six inches in diameter, and the piston had a stroke of twenty-four inches; the step of the feet was twenty-six inches, and the whole machine, including water, weighed about forty-five hundredweight. In 1815, the engine of this carriage exploded and killed thirteen persons.

THOMAS TINDALL

A steam engine was patented, in 1814, by Thomas Tindall, of Scarborough.

The inventor proposed to use this for an infinitude of purposes, such as driving carriages for the conveyance of pa.s.sengers, ploughing land, mowing gra.s.s and corn, or working thrashing machines. The carriage had three wheels--one for steering. The steam engine drove, by spur gearing, four legs, which, pushing against the ground, moved the carriage. The engine could also be made to act upon the two hind wheels for ascending hills, or for drawing heavy loads. A windmill, driven partly by the action of the wind, and partly by the exhaust steam from the engine, was used as adjunct power.

JOHN BAYNES

A very ingenious modification of William Brunton's mechanical traveler, was the subject of a patent granted to John Baynes, a cutler, of Sheffield, England, in September, 1819. The mechanism was designed to be attached to carriages for the purpose of giving them motion by means of manual labor, or by other suitable power, and consisted of a peculiar combination of levers and rods. The patentee also stated that there might be several sets of the machinery above described for working each set with a treadle, or even only one set and treadle. Then he added: "I prefer two for ordinary purposes, particularly when only a single person is intended to be conveyed in the carriage, who may work the same by placing one foot on each treadle, in which the action will be alternate. The lower parts of the leg should be so formed or shod as not to slip upon the ground. This machinery may be variously applied to carriages, according to circ.u.mstances, so as that the treadles may be worked either behind or before the carriage, still producing a forward motion; in some cases it may be advantageous to joint the front end of the treadles to the carriage and press the feet on the hind ends."

JULIUS GRIFFITHS

Among those who came to the front with plans for steam carriages for the public highways, soon after the roads began to be improved, was Julius Griffiths, of Brompton Crescent. In 1821, he patented a steam carriage that was built by Joseph Bramhah, a celebrated engineer and manufacturer.

It is said that part of the mechanism was designed by Arzberger, a foreigner.

The carriage has been termed by some English authorities "the first steam coach constructed in this country, expressly for the conveyance of pa.s.sengers on common roads." It was repeatedly tested during a period of three or four years, but failed on account of boiler deficiencies.

Alexander Gordon said of it: "The engines, pumps, and connections were all in the best style of mechanical execution, and had Mr. Griffiths' boiler been of such a kind as to generate regularly the required quant.i.ty of steam, a perfect steam carriage must have been the consequence." The carriage moved easily and answered very readily to guidance. The vehicle was a double coach and could carry eight pa.s.sengers.

This locomotive had two vertical working steam cylinders, which with the boiler, condenser, and other details were suspended to a wood frame at the rear of the carriage. The engineer was seated behind and did his own firing. The boiler was a series of horizontal water tubes, one and one-half inches in diameter and two feet long; at each end the f.l.a.n.g.es were bolted to the vertical tubes forming the sides of the furnace.

Attached to the wood frame in front of the driving wheels, was a small water tank, and a force pump supplied the boiler with water. The steam, pa.s.sing through the cylinder, went into an air condenser. The power of the engines was communicated from the piston rods to the driving wheels of the carriage by sweep rods, the lower ends of which were provided with driving pinions and detents, which operated upon toothed gear fixed to the hind carriage axle. The object of this mechanism was to keep the driving pinions always in gear with the toothed wheels, however the engine and other machinery might vibrate or the wheels be jolted upon uneven ground.

The boiler, engine, and other working parts were suspended to the wood frame by chain slings, having strong spiral springs so as to reduce the vibration from rough roads.

EDMUND CARTWRIGHT

Born at Marnham, Nottinghamshire, England, April 24, 1743. Died at Hastings, October 30, 1823.

Cartwright was educated at Oxford and secured a living in the English church. He devoted himself to the ministry and to literature until 1784, when he became interested in machinery and in the following year invented the power loom. He took out other patents and also gave some attention to devising a mechanical carriage propelled by man power. In 1822, he made a vehicle that was moved by a pair of treadles and cranks worked by the driver.

Even the steam engine engaged his attention. Some improvements which he proposed in it are recorded in works on mechanics. While residing at Eltham, in Lincolnshire, he used frequently to tell his son that, if he lived to be a man, he would see both ships and land-carriages impelled by steam. At that early period he constructed a model of a steam engine attached to a barge, which he explained, about the year 1793, to Robert Fulton. It appears that even in his old age, only a year before his death, he was actively engaged in endeavoring to contrive a plan of propelling land-carriages by steam.

T. BURTSALL

An engineer, of Edinburgh, Scotland, T. Burtsall, in conjunction with J.

Hill, of London, got out, in 1824, a patent for flash or instantaneous generation boilers. His aim was to make the metal of the boiler store heat instead of a ma.s.s of water, and he accomplished this by heating the boiler to anywhere from two hundred and fifty degrees to six hundred degrees Fahrenheit, keeping the water in a separate vessel and pumping it into the boiler as steam was required. A coach that he built to run with this boiler weighed eight tons, and it was a failure, simply because the boiler could not make steam fast enough.

T. W. PARKER

A working model of a light steam carriage was made by T. W. Parker, of Illinois, in 1825. Three wheels supported the carriage, the two hind wheels being eight feet in diameter. The double-cylinder engine was used.

GEORGE POc.o.c.k

One of the most curious of the wind vehicle productions that held the fancy of scientists to a slight extent in the early part of the nineteenth century was the charvolant or kite carriage that was devised by George Poc.o.c.k in 1826, and built by Poc.o.c.k and his partner, Colonel Viney. This was a very light one-seated carriage, drawn by a string of kites harnessed tandem. With a good wind these kites developed great power and it is said that the carriage whirled along, even on heavy roads, at the rate of a mile in three or even two and one-half minutes. Once Viney and Poc.o.c.k made the trip from Bristol to London, and they often ran their carriage around Hyde Park and the suburbs of London. As the wind could not always be depended upon the charvolant was provided with a rear platform, upon which a pony was carried for emergencies.

SAMUEL BROWN

In 1826, Samuel Brown applied his gas-vacuum engine to the propulsion of a carriage, which was effectively worked along the public roads in England.

It even ascended the very steep acclivity of Shooter's Hill, in Kent, to the astonishment of numerous spectators. The expense of working this machine was, however, said far to exceed that of steam, and this formed a barrier to its introduction. Experiments with this engine for the propulsion of vessels on ca.n.a.ls or rivers were also made by the Ca.n.a.l Gas Engine Company. Brown patented a locomotive for common roads in 1823.

JAMES NEVILLE

In January, 1827, James Neville, an engineer of London, took out a patent for a "new-invented improved carriage," to be worked by steam, the chief object of which appears to have been to provide wheels adapted to take a firm hold of the ground. He proposed to make each of the spokes of the wheels by means of two rods of iron, coming nearly together at the nave, but diverging considerably apart to their other ends, where they were fastened to an iron felly-ring of the breadth of the tire, and this tire was to be so provided with numerous pointed studs about half an inch long as to stick into the ground to prevent the wheel from slipping round. A second method of preventing this effect was to fasten upon the tire a series of flat springing plates, each of them forming a tangent to the circ.u.mference, so that as the wheels rolled forward each plate should be bent against the tire and recover its tangential position as it left the ground in its revolution. It was considered that the increased bearing surface of the plate, and the resistance of its farthest edge, would infallibly prevent slipping. For propelling the carriage Neville proposed to use a horizontal vibrating cylinder to give motion direct to the crank axis by means of the compound motion of the piston rod, as invented by Trevithick, the motion to the running wheels to be communicated through gear of different velocities.

T. S. HOLLAND

Among the singular propositions for producing a locomotive action that were brought out early in the eighteenth century was that invented by T.

S. Holland, of London, for which he took out a patent in December, 1827.

The invention consisted in the application of an arrangement of levers, similar to that commonly known by the name of lazy-tongs, for the purpose of propelling carriages. The objects appeared to be to derive from the reciprocating motion of a short lever a considerable degree of speed, and to obtain an abutment against which the propellers should act horizontally, in the direction of the motion of the carriage, instead of obliquely to that motion, as is the case when carriages are impelled by levers striking the earth.

JAMES NASMYTH

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, August 19, 1808. Died in South Kensington, England, May 6, 1890.

While yet in his teens James Nasmyth showed great mechanical ability and constructed a small steam engine. In 1821, he became a student at the Edinburgh School of Arts. Six years later he had made a very substantial advance in his experiments. The story of what he endeavored to accomplish is best told by himself. In later life he wrote:

"About the year 1827, when I was nineteen years old, the subject of steam carriages to run upon common roads occupied considerable attention.

Several engineers and mechanical schemers had tried their hands, but as yet no substantial results had come of their attempts to solve the problem. Like others, I tried my hand. Having made a small working model of a steam carriage, I exhibited it before the members of the Scottish Society of Arts. The performance of this active little machine was so gratifying to the Society, that they requested me to construct one of such power as to enable four or six persons to be conveyed along the ordinary roads. The members of the Society, in their individual capacity, subscribed three hundred dollars, which they placed in my hands as the means for carrying out their project. I accordingly set to work at once, and completed the carriage in about four months, when it was exhibited before the members of the Society of Arts. Many successful trials were made with it on the Queensferry Road, near Edinburgh. The runs were generally of four or five miles, with a load of eight pa.s.sengers sitting on benches about three feet from the ground. The experiments were continued for nearly three months, to the great satisfaction of the members.

"I may mention that in my steam carriage I employed the waste steam to create a blast or draught, by discharging it into the short chimney of the boiler at its lowest part; and I found it most effective. I was not at that time aware that George Stephenson and others had adopted the same method; but it was afterwards gratifying to me to find that I had been correct as regards the important uses of the steam blast in the chimney.

In fact, it is to this use of the waste steam that we owe the practical success of the locomotive engine as a tractive power on railways, especially at high speeds.

"The Society of Arts did not attach any commercial value to my road carriage. It was merely as a matter of experiment that they had invited me to construct it. When it proved successful they made me a present of the entire apparatus. As I was anxious to get on with my studies, and to prepare for the work of practical engineering, I proceeded no further. I broke up the steam carriage, and sold the two small high-pressure engines, provided with a strong boiler, for three hundred and thirty-five dollars, a sum which more than defrayed all the expenses of the construction and working of the machine."

F. ANDREWS

It is said that F. Andrews, of Stamford Rivers, Ess.e.x, England, was the inventor of the pilot steering wheel which was used by Gurney and has been often used since then. He also made other improvements in steam carriages in 1826. One of his patents was for the oscillating cylinders that were used by James Neville in his steam carriage. Andrews' steam carriage was a failure, like many others of that period, on account of imperfect working of the boiler.