Background
Trevithick was born on the 13th of April in the parish of Illogan, Cornwall, United Kingdom, and was the only son of Richard Trevithick, manager of the Dolcoath and other important Cornish mines.
Trevithick was born on the 13th of April in the parish of Illogan, Cornwall, United Kingdom, and was the only son of Richard Trevithick, manager of the Dolcoath and other important Cornish mines.
He attended his first and only school at Camborne, and was in general a slow and obstinate scholar, though he showed considerable aptitude for figures.
He was a precursor of George Stephenson in the construction of locomotive engines.
On Christmas Eve 1801 his common road locomotive carried the first load of passengers ever conveyed by steam, and on the 24th of March 1802 he and Andrew Vivian applied for a patent for steam-engines in propelling carriages.
In 1803 another steam vehicle made by him was run in the streets of London, from Leather Lane along Oxford Street to Paddington, the return journey being made by Islington.
He next directed his attention to the construction of a steam locomotive for tramways, with such success that in February 1804 at Pen-y- darran in Wales he worked a tramroad locomotive which was able to haul twenty tons of iron; a similar engine was supplied to the Wylam colliery (Newcastle) in the following year.
A little later he was appointed to execute a driftway under the Thames, but the work was abandoned owing to the water breaking in.
He then set up workshops at Limehouse, for the construction of iron tanks and buoys.
He was the first to recognize the importance of iron in the construction of large ships, and in various ways his ideas also influenced the construction of steamboats.
A high- pressure steam threshing engine was erected by him in 1812 at Trewithen, while in the same year, in a letter to the Board of Agriculture, he stated his belief that every part of agriculture might be performed by steam, and that such a use of the steam-engine would " double the population of the kingdom and make our markets the cheapest in the world. "
In 1814 he entered on an agreement for the construction of engines for mines in Peru, and to superintend their working removed to Peru in 1816.
Thence he went in 1822 to Costa Ricq.
He returned to England in 1827, and in 1828 petitioned parliament for a reward for his inventions, but without success.