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Richard Trevithick (13 April 1771 – 22 April 1833) was a British inventor and mining engineer from Cornwall, England, UK.
The son of a mining captain, and born in the mining heartland of Cornwall, Trevithick was immersed in mining and engineering from an early age. He performed poorly in school, but went on to be an early pioneer of steam-powered road and rail transport. His most significant contribution was the development of the first high-pressure steam engine. He also built the first full-scale working railway steam locomotive. The world's first locomotive-hauled railway journey took place on 21 February 1804, when Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the tramway of the Penydarren Ironworks, in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales.
Turning his interests abroad, Trevithick also worked as a mining consultant in Peru and later explored parts of Costa Rica. Throughout his professional career, he went through many ups and downs, and at one point faced financial ruin, also suffering from the strong rivalry of many mining and steam engineers of the day. During the prime of his career, he was a well-respected and known figure in mining and engineering, but near the end of his life he fell out of the public eye.
Trevithick built a full-size steam road locomotive in 1801, on a site near present-day Fore Street in Camborne. Trevithick named his carriage “Puffing Devil” and on Christmas Eve that year, he demonstrated it by successfully carrying six passengers up Fore Street and then continuing on up Camborne Hill, from Camborne Cross, to the nearby village of Beacon. His cousin and associate, Andrew Vivian, steered the machine. This is widely recognized as the first demonstration of transportation powered by steam. It inspired the popular Cornish folk song "Camborne Hill". During further tests, Trevithick's locomotive broke down three days later after passing over a gully in the road. The vehicle was left under some shelter with the fire still burning whilst the operators retired to a nearby public house for a meal of roast goose and drinks. Meanwhile, the water boiled off, the engine overheated and the machine burned, destroying it. Trevithick did not consider this a serious setback, but rather operator error.
In 1802, Trevithick took out a patent for his high-pressure steam engine. To prove his ideas, he built a stationary engine at the Coalbrookdale Company's works in Shropshire in 1802, forcing water to a measured height to measure the work done. The engine ran at forty piston strokes a minute, with an unprecedented boiler pressure of 145 psi (1,000 kPa).
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