May 20, 2014 • 40 mins
In the days before horseless carriages, interstates and even locomotives, the Puffing Devil made history as the first passenger-carrying, horseless, steam-powered "road locomotive." But where did it come from, and where is it today? Listen in to learn more with Scott and Ben.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're behind the Wheel, under the Hood and beyond with
car stuff from house stuff Works dot Com. Everybody, Welcome
to podcast. I'm Scoff and I'm Ben Boland. Ben. Today's
topic is one that you found and that the title
alone had me just just enthralled. I was excited about
this one right away. I don't I didn't know what
(00:22):
it was initially, but but you know, once I dug
into it, I'm even more excited about. Yeah, I was
mystified myself, also drawn in by the title. Ladies and gentlemen,
today we're talking about a very curious vehicle called the
Puffing Devil. Yeah. Intriguing, isn't it. I mean, just just
the sound of that, the puffing Devil. You might try
(00:42):
to think, like, well, who would be so bold is
to name something the puffing Devil? What is that? It
sounds like a dragster maybe or something like that. But
far from it, right right, far from it. This is
actually the world's forst letting. Make sure you this title, right, Scott,
the world's for steam powered road locomotive for passengers or
(01:06):
something like that, something like that. I think a lying
in my notes here, I've got the exact description, but
you're very very close a road locomotive, which is really
really interesting because we find out, you know, as we
go through here that that road locomotives predate um locomotives
that are that were on rails. Right, Yes, what what
we're talking about is a very curious vehicle that happened. Um,
(01:33):
you know, it wasn't the first steam engine by any means.
We know more about the history of steam engines right now.
We're gonna talk about some of that too. I mean,
I've got it going all the way back to the
very first steam engine. We won't we won't dwell on
that too, right, yeah, but we we do want to
put it in context. We'll be talking more about the
inventor Richard Trevitt, who was born in seventeen seventy one.
(01:57):
Uh he was in he was in the Cornwall area
and his father was a mine administrator, and so he
wasn't the best kid in school, but he was pretty
sharp when it came to math, and most of his
learning was a matter of navigating the industrial areas of Cornwall.
(02:22):
Uh So he was always inspired by steam engines, which
is weird because the deal with Cornwall mining at the
time was that the minds themselves were notoriously difficult to
work with because they had to keep pumping water out
of these mines, and to do this they use steam engines,
(02:45):
and as a result, Cornwall became home to so many
steam engines, a preposterous amount for the time. And Richard,
the young Richard trevith Thicke at this time, grew up
around these machines and was fascinated by the Yeah, that's right.
So he's he's seeing these things every day, you know,
kind of hanging out with his dad at work and
and checking out what's going on. And of course there's
(03:06):
maintenance that goes along with all this, and you know
he's he's intrigued by the inner workings of it, because
most kids are. I mean, I think they see something
like that and they want to tear it apart and
see what makes it work. And that's exactly what he
was doing, I think, because he's watching over the shoulder
of people who were tearing them apart and you know,
fixing them, repairing them, because I think these things broke
down an awful lot. And the early steam engines were
used strictly as pumps. Now, when we think of steam engines,
(03:29):
now we think of them as smaller, more mobile devices.
You know, they're able to power, and we don't see
them much anymore of them, to be honest, A lot
of the novelty devices to show the proof of the concept. Yeah,
but I mean in the museums in places like that,
when we see them, we think of them as as
being small, you know, more portable, I guess, And I
know they're big, but portable in the fact that you know,
(03:51):
they're not the size of the building, and they're not
strictly for one use only, which was pumping, because the
initial steam engines they had a regular use and that
was just pumping. That's all they did. They just pumped
water out of wells and that was it because they
were very limited in in what they could do because
of the motion of the thing, the size of the thing, right, Uh,
you know exactly what they did. And all of this
(04:13):
developed relatively quickly. But I mean when I say quickly,
I mean within like a hundred a hundred and fifty years,
which is still relatively quickly. Relatively quickly. That's that's the
key point here. And um man, I where do you
want to start with this, Ben, because we can talk
about steam. I I so want to get to Richard
trevith Ikken and the Puffing Devil and you know all
that that surrounds that, but he kind of comes later
(04:35):
in the story. Really. Yeah, you know, what we should
probably talk about first is just a brief background on
steam engines in general. Okay, real quick, al right. The
first steam engine, the steam engine inventor. His name was
Thomas Nucaman and it was around seventeen or five, I think,
and he was a blacksmith and an inventor when he
when he developed this h this idea, and it was
(04:55):
designed really just to improve the efficiency of water pumps
and mine. So there you go. That was the initial
intent of the steam engine. And it was basically so
that the galleries could be driven or dug out further
underground because the deeper you go, the more they fill
up with water and uh and of course that becomes
a problem. You can't have people down there working when
there's this water continually flowing into the mind. So that's
(05:16):
what they were done doing rather and um, you know,
the idea, you know, kind of hung around for a
long long time before anybody did anything to them. Really,
the guy named James Watt, who we've talked about a
few times on this podcast. Very smart, smart, very smart guy. Yeah.
He he had several improvements on the steam engine, but
those didn't come until about seventeen sixty nine. So we're
(05:37):
talking like a good sixty four sixty five years of
them being relatively inefficient and just again just for pumping
water out of mines, and they will remain that way
for another fifty years, right. Yeah. The Newcoman engine, as
useful as it was, may sound pretty bad and modern
day standards because it had what's called a thermal efficiency
(06:01):
of around one percent and it uh it ate coal,
It devoured coal. This this was a hungry machine and
um one of the problems without of course, is that
it relies on coal and not every place just has coal.
H James Watt, you know, when he was working at
Glasgow University, he put in some changes that made this
(06:26):
far and above a superior engine. One of the things
is that it's uh it's thermal efficiency increased to two
point seven percent as he was working up to four
point five percent, and a lot of this efficiency changed
the potential applications of the steam engine. But that process
(06:49):
wasn't over yet. Because now we have a new guy
coming into the field, you know, and I still want
just for a second, if you don't mind, I want
to talk about WAT for just one more minute here,
maybe a couple of minutes. But um, the whole way
that that what came into contact with the new Coman design.
As you mentioned Glasgow University, right, yeah, I guess he
was working there. I'm not sure exactly what his his
role was an instrument maker. Okay, so he's an instrument maker.
(07:13):
Makes sense then because he had a work bench and
I guess, uh, you know, the some of the stuff
around there that will break down, he would they would
bring in for him to fix. You know. It's like
he was the kind of the handy guy there. Right.
So one of the things that that ends up on
his workbench is a is a small model of new
Comman's steam engine, the pump, right, very small models used
for teaching purpose and a lot of times this thing
(07:35):
would just quit working and and which doesn't say a
whole lot about it, but I mean, I guess, you know,
a little model like that. There's other problems, you know,
the different from the full scale models and everything. But um,
one thing that he realized while he's looking at this thing,
was he realized some of these inefficiencies and this this
new comman design, And he noticed that the cylinder got
really really hot with steam and then it had to
(07:56):
be cooled off during this condensation phase where they would
actually break cold water into the cylinder to bring the
piston back down. And um, you know, this isn't the
how steam engines work podcast by any means, but um,
just giving you a quick thing. You know, like the
steam heats it up, the piston rises up, you have
to spray cold water into it to cool it down,
and that allows the piston to drop back down, along
(08:18):
with a couple of other things. There are other forces
that play there, but um, that's the basic idea behind
the thing. Well, he realized that, you know, if you
didn't have to heat and cool this thing over and
over and over again the same cylinder, that you'd be
able to get a lot more efficiency out of it.
So he decided, you know, to work on a way
to keep the cylinder hot at all times and separate
(08:38):
water cooled condens. Exactly right, So two separate cylinders, and
uh and again I've got well, I went off the
deep end here, But I've got three handwritten pages here
that I'm looking at of notes about, you know, the
improvements and everything, and we're not going to go into that.
Let's let's not do it. Let's save it for another
you know, maybe how steam engines work podcast. So I've
got great notes to that. I also have too many
(09:00):
notes on how steam engines were. And then here's what happened.
He took the Yeah, we both do. We got piles
of notes here. So what happened was that, you know,
he developed this idea and really got the ideas patented.
I think I said around seventeen sixty nine, so late
and late in the game, I guess for steam. But
um Watt then had to find a way to finance
his new project. So he works with this guy named
(09:22):
John Roebuck who's a mine owner, and Roebuck takes something
like two thirds of the share of the patent of
the steam engine of his you know, redesigned steam engine.
And then four years later, I guess, this Roebuck guy
goes bankrupt, you know, because of something that happened in
the minds or something like that, and he sells his
two thirds share to a guy named Matthew Bolton and
(09:42):
Bolton worked with Watt and they formed a They built
the world's first factory that produced steam engines, and that
was in I think it was in Birmingham, England, and
so the company called Bolton and Watt. And you can
still go and see this factory. It's still there, um,
you know, obviously not working, but I don't know if
it's a museum at this point or not, um, something
(10:03):
like that. I think you can still see it. A
little side note here, Uh, the miners were very unhappy
with Bolton and Watt fairly quickly because they were still
saving a little bit of money, but they they began
charging users of the engine, uh something that was about
one third of the amount they would have saved on
(10:26):
the coal because the Watt engine used less coal, but
you had to pay them. Well it's like a weird text.
Yeah it's tax and uh that wasn't you know. That
wasn't all of it. Because also they enforced the patent heavily,
so no reverse engineering the Watt engine. So people people
(10:47):
were not super happy about it, and they kept trying
to figure out how to make this just different enough
to skirt around the patent. Uh, so people had I
guess the reason I'm saying this is people had a
present an immediate motivation to improve the steam engine, quick
(11:07):
Fasten and her and Troth it was one of them.
And and you know, along the way, of course, what
is still working on an improved design. So he's still
like doing things and I'd tell you just to just
a list of the things he's doing. He comes up
with a double acting steam engine that that now is
like is really efficient because it's powering the piston up
and powering the pistons back down again. And you know,
we'll talk about that again in the Steam Engine and
(11:29):
podcast will inevitably do at some point. But um, he
also found a way to convert and this is a
big one, Ben. He found a way to convert the
linear motion of the piston into a rotating motion. And
he developed what developed the the sun and planetary gear
set that we you know, we see in a lot
of different things now. So um, you know, automobiles, it
was huge for automobiles, huge for locomotives of course, which
(11:52):
is what we're getting to. UM. And he also developed
um an automatic speak control like a centric centrifical or
think they called it um a flyball governor for the
steam engine. So this is all kind of evened out
the power and um, all these developments are happening. Other
people are saying, I still need to get around these
taxes because this this what guy is is he's running
(12:13):
the game. I mean, he got he's got the patent
on everything, and he's further developing. He's got the factory backing,
you know, behind him, and he's the Walter Wider of
steam engines. Well and anybody that worked in the factory,
because I don't think that I don't actually don't think
that he um he actually developed the planetary gear said,
I think it was another guy. There was a Scottish
engineer that came up with it, but he was an
employee of the factory, of the Bolton and Watt factory,
(12:35):
and therefore his patent fell under UM, well, he wasn't
really able to patent it. I think what was the
one who patented the design? Kind of an Edison situation. Well,
that happens in a lot of big companies, and so
that happened with this one. So you know, there's this
factory that's really just churning out ideas and other people
are saying, how can I get around this? I've got
to do something completely different. And that was where Richard
(12:55):
Trevithy came in because he had an innovation that was
was going to bring it even further into the into
the future. I guess yes. And before we tell you
the rest of the story, I'd like to ask you
a question, Scott, or tell you to tell you a
really short story. Let's go back to the show before
(13:16):
you head out Canadaway, because there's a very interesting part
of this story. So we've already set the stage with
what who is make no mistake, a prodigy. He's a genius.
He is an amazing inventor, even if he isn't the
most uh people oriented person. You know who he hated though?
(13:38):
Who's that? Teff I? Betty did? Because he's got you know,
here's a guy that takes his great design and just
improves on it a little bit more. Because you know,
patents were starting to run out around around the year
eighteen hundred and so that means that you know, we're
just now breaking into the nineteenth century and and um,
you know, people are really starting to be able to
improve on on the watt design even more because you
(13:59):
know this why and I was want one more time
just mentioned this because this is critical. You know that
rotary movement thing, you know, like I mentioned, well that
and you know how he found a way to convert
that linear motion into rotary motion. It was so huge,
Ben that was that was an amazing advancement because it
could finally be used to drive other machines. Like it
(14:19):
changed the application of the engine. Yeah, you're not tied
to the elements like you were before because or your location,
your physical location, because you know, these mining pumps were
strictly for minds in their place there and that was
where they ran. Well, now you could you could have
a um a device that would they would have a
rotary motion you would need for grinding. But you didn't
have to be near a river that ran a grist mill.
(14:42):
You know, you didn't have to have you know, wind
and water wheels to do things. You know, before you
did have to have that, and now you didn't because
these pumps are these uh, the steam engines were strictly
for pumps prior to that. Now they could be used
to drive wheels, and wheels were huge and then people
that got I guess people's mental wheels spang and decided that,
you know, maybe there's way I could use this for transportation.
(15:05):
Let me let me dovetail into that here. So one
of Trevior thicks big big claims or big things that
he's known for rights big improvements, is that he believed
there should be high pressure steam involved. Right, That's what
we left off at I guess before and yeah, and
(15:26):
he wanted a boiler that made this pressure possible. But
what was against this? I just want to I just
wanted to read this Lindson quotation. What was implacably opposed
to this development? Which he considered foolhardy and dangerous, famously
declaring that Trevor Thicks should be hanged for his efforts.
(15:47):
So nice work. Oh thanks man, Well I was there.
I am pretty took us there. Thanks, But point being,
what was uh what was in sense? Can you imagine
saying this guy I should be hanged. That's amazing. I mean,
because he developed, he improved on your design. That's why
a little bit of sour grapes there, I think a
(16:08):
little bit. So the uh, the this thing that he
is working on, that Trevior Thick is working on ultimately
does become a game changer, because this thing that Trevior
Thick designs ultimately does become much It's like a paradigm shift,
you know. It's it's so much bigger than uh maybe
(16:32):
even what the most optimistic people at the time thought
could be. Well, I mean, this is this is I
can't stress this enough, man, This is this is before
the steam locomotive. This is people just didn't have any
other way to get around other than you know, walking
or or horseprint transportation or gravity. You know, if you're
at the top of the hill, you could, sure, you
could roll down the hill. That's fine, But now here's
(16:53):
the way that you can power yourself up and over
the hill. And it's brand new to everybody. And to
put yourself in that mindset like this has got to
be incredible amazing to see something powering itself forward. It's
moving on rails or or you know, as in trevithis
early design, not even on rails. It was moving down
the road, you know, the road that was intended for
horses to walk on. Right, just cast yourself back there
(17:15):
if you can, and imagine seeing a horseless carriage for
the first time. Your first question is, where the hell
is the horse and then how did they fit it
in there? Are they burning that horse for energy? Um?
So okay, so this boiler, this is really what it
all comes back to, Uh, that this boiler is able
(17:38):
to withstand the pressure of all this steam. So Trevithick
divide designs the spoiler for its strength, and because he
doesn't have a flat base, he puts the fire in
the flu inside of the boiler using a U shaped
fire tube. So this maximize the surface area. And uh,
(18:00):
well you know what I got. I got a little
something added that if you got one second, let me
just break out here if it just first second, because
I found a BBC a little short on on high
pressure steam innovation and Trevioris designs here and you're you
just talked about both of them right in one sentence.
And that's why I figured I just stopped right here because, um,
the two things. Now you can look this up. It's
(18:21):
BBC the Genius of invention. You know, Trevithis innovation something
like that. The two things, two big things that really
led to his success were the fire tube that you
mentioned is U shape? Uh? Now in the demonstration that
I saw, the guy had a kettle, a tea kettle
and had one regular tea kettle and one that had
this head of fire tube through it. It was just
a metal tube goes right through the middle of it,
(18:42):
all the way down to the fire. You could look
right through it. Uh. The idea is that there's more
surface area that's being heated and it has greater contact
with the water surrounding it and uh and therefore boils faster.
So he had a very efficient boiler system in that way.
And the other thing is the cylindrical boiler design. Now
you know in a in a train, we see the
(19:02):
boiler at the at the on the top of the train.
I guess this lane horizontally and that giant tube black
thing on a on a steam locomotive is the boiler.
And the piston is way down by the wheels. It's
a small little thing down at the very front of
the train that you wouldn't even expect. I mean you
kind of think of the cylinder now when we think
of engines, that's where the piston is. Right. You think
there's a giant piston in there that's driving the wheels.
(19:24):
But that's not the case. That's all water and fire,
and that it's loaded with tubes. These tubes that carry um,
you know, we'll carry heat and they also carry the
boiled water, I mean the steam you know what. We
won't get into exactly what they do, but it's loaded
with tubes. And the cylindrical boiler design was big because
(19:45):
the Wat design boiler was square. And the square design,
if you if you put a lot of pressure into
a square um you know, welded together box, I guess, uh,
the sides, the sides are gonna bulge, the teams are
all gonna pop open. But in a cylinder that you
can put an immense amount of pressure inside there and
(20:05):
it will hold. And and that's exactly what Trevior Hick
was was, you know, playing on this idea that he
could go with the high pressure steam. Watts design couldn't
handle it. Yeah, And the invention of this boiler did
more than just eclipse Watts square design. It. Uh, it
even did away with the condenser. So without this condenser, right, Uh,
(20:30):
the stuff from Trevior Thicks engine, the uh stuff they're
expelling is puffing out directly into the atmosphere, which gives
it this name, the puffing devil. Yeah. It was either
coal which was burning or would I'm not sure which
it was. It was likely coal, if I had to guess.
And uh and also some steam. There's a little bit
(20:51):
of steam that that's let off there as well. So yeah,
it gives it this this appearance. But people when they
see something like this coming, they must have thought the
world is anyam ben? I mean when they see something
like that, it's like this side this, um, I don't know,
it's almost like a like a like a monster coming
down the road. Oh well, one thing, let's be clear.
When he first built his Trevithick engines, uh, he was
(21:15):
putting them still in mining operations, and they had fantastic
pound per square inch. We're talking on the order of
twenty five, which sounds so unimpressive today, but let us consider,
you know, the other things are around like seven or fourteen.
You know, well, these are these are pieces of metal
that are hammered out by hand by a blacksmith on
(21:36):
an anvil, and they're they're bolted together and you know,
they're just not they're not sealed up the way that
we see them now and you know from modern factory, right. Yeah,
and uh so his first one was installed at a
place called Cook's kitchen mine in eighteen hundred and eighteen
seventy it was still running, Scott. This engine was so powerful.
(21:58):
The treviorth Thick is looking at it one day and
just you know, watching this monster, uh puff smoke and
poor steam and and and eat through the ground in
a mind and he says, man, that thing is strong.
That that thing is probably powerful enough too, And then
it hits him, maybe it can propel itself. Well, he
(22:21):
probably saw the rotary motion of a of a drive
wheel or something like that and realized like, okay, I'm
I'm looking at this horse wagon going by, and here's
the drive wheel. Wait a second, I'm putting these two
and two together. Why do we even need that horse
out front? Right? So I'm sure that that's kind of
the way it probably went, you know. It's just uh,
who knows. Maybe you got into the ale one evening
and he's like laying around, you know, kind of dreaming, daydreaming,
(22:42):
thinking about what would be really cool, and uh, I
don't know, this is all we're just guessing, right, It's
that's right in a moment like that this weekend. So anyway,
so he's probably thinking like, how can I make this work?
And he just kind of, you know, cobbled together something really,
I mean more than more than that. I mean, but
it's a it's a big impressive machine obviously, but um,
(23:03):
you know, to be able to think like that, I'm
gonna put one of these steam engines on top of
a wagon really at that point, but with with steel wheels,
and we're gonna try to make this thing drive, and
we're gonna drive it through the town. It's gonna require
several operators, you know, because someone's gotta steer, someone's gotta
stoke the flames. Someone's got to be in charge of
the bypass valve just in case too much pressure builds up.
(23:26):
And it's got to be switch a few different people. So,
you know, he finally gets all this together, and it's
somewhere around uh, December of night where I'm sorry, December
of eighteen oh one. Yeah, it's uh, it's I've seen
it described as by Christmas Eve time leading up to Christmas. Yeah,
and they've been working on since November of eighteen hundred.
(23:47):
Uh So in Christmas Eve they start running the Puffing Devil.
But here's the thing they improved. He improves it the
entire year he's working on it. Uh. The boiler by
this time, by the first run is doing forty seven
pounds for square not bad, not bad. He's got a
lot of pressure going in this thing. And um, you know,
the first drive, I guess the first demonstration was December
(24:08):
twenty four, so Christmas Eve in eighteen o one. As
we mentioned, it's the first demonstration of transportation powered by steam.
That's that's super impressive as a as a practical method
of transportation. Yeah, I guess we're failed experiments before. Yeah,
and we've talked about one of these guys, right, the
Nicholas Joseph Kuban design, you know maybe and uh, I
(24:31):
think they're around seventeen seventy. There was a steam powered wagon.
Now I don't know if it was really the same
type of thing, because, um, this one that we're talking about,
Trevithicks design was steerable and I don't think the other
one was steerable. I think it just went and in fact,
it went through a wall, I believe, right, So that
was no good and I think it destroyed itself on
his first outing. But this one I believe he I
(24:53):
don't think he made it up to the top of
the hill. He's trying to go up a hill called
Camborne Hill, I believe, and Camborne Hill, which is by
the way of folk song now based on based on
this initial trip. Um, I don't think he made it
up the hill on the first attempt. I think that's
what happened, right, So he didn't make it up. But
he and the guys that he was with, I think
he were like seven or eight guys on this thing,
and you know, a yeah, probably having a big Christmas
(25:15):
Eve party up the hill. I probably could have, yeah,
maybe if they had lost a few past news on
the way, right, But um, I had to turn around
and come back home. And then I think it only
last this thing, this uh, this this original uh puffing
Devil only lasted a few days, right, because there was
an incident they had pulled into. I think it was
(25:37):
I want to say, it's an and I don't know
the details right in front of me, Ben, but I
remember the story that they pulled into an end, I think,
and they're gonna have, you know, have a couple of drinks,
I think, and they left it out in a barn,
is that right? Uh? Yeah, So they they had they
had some disasters didn't last to much past December. Um.
I had heard that one of their they had three journeys.
(25:59):
I think on it, E that's it. I think it's
just maybe that was what I was thinking of the three.
I don't know if it lasted three days. Maybe it's
a little longer than that, but three journeys. So they
one day, Trevith Thick and one of his buddies go
out and they're trying to visit a place called to
Hittie House. T e h I d y it's about
(26:19):
four kilometers away. Um. Trevith Thicks tending the engine, Vivian
is steering. Uh. They hit a gully in the road,
steering handle wrenches from Vivian's hands, and the devil overturns. Uh.
So passersbys and other people helped push this back right,
(26:39):
push us back to its right way because he's in
a gully right right. And so they say, okay, this
thing is messed up. You know, let's just call declare
victory for the day because the engine broke down. So
they go to the hotel and they have a couple
of beers. Public house, I think it's what they call
a public house, you know. Drowned drown your anger and
(27:01):
some uh, some pines of ale and uh. It turns
out that either a fire was still burning in the
Puffing Devil's furnace or the water evaporated but the metal
parts became red hot, and then that combined with a
wooden wagon, right and a barn that was probably parked
(27:21):
in right, made everything burned. Yeah. Yeah, so the whole
thing burned to the ground. Of course, there's nothing left.
He can't really salvage something like that. I mean, I
don't know if he ever even really attempted to rebuild
the Puffing Devil himself, because he was really he was
really working on the idea behind steam locomotives, and he
wanted to get this thing on rails because for I
(27:42):
believe Ben, I think it was something like, I want
to say, like two hundred years prior to this, horses
had been pulling wagons on wheels on rails, and you know,
so there's this like real primitive railway system, but it
wasn't it wasn't steam powered. And I mean really, for
a long long time they were pulling things on rails
because they knew it was an efficient way to do it.
(28:02):
It's just they didn't have the the mobile power to
be able to handle something like her to do it.
And that's exactly why Trevithicks design, you know this uh,
this high high pressure um you know, relatively small design
uh steam engine was able to be used for for
this application and it fit perfectly. And that's exactly what
he did because he designed. Now, Trevithick is credited with
(28:25):
building the first full scale working railway system locomotive ever
and it was in it was in the UK, it
was it was demonstrated in Wales. I believe the first time,
right and um, the first journey ever was something and
I think it was in February of eighteen o four,
in late February of eighteen o four, so that's three
years after two and a half years after the Puffing
(28:48):
Devil debuted. So this is a this is a huge advancement. Yeah,
he's a mover and his shaker. I do also want
to point out that the finished engine for the Puffing
Devil weighed about one and a half whoa because you know,
I think of the kind of materials they're working with.
They weren't working with aluminium. There's no carbon fiber, there's
no carbon fiber another five or six years before carbon
(29:11):
fiber has developed. So, uh, we've got a little bit
of a downturn in the episode though, because uh, you're
gonna let that go the five or six years coming.
I'm gonna let it go. Okay, Well, what about like
aircraft aluminium something like that? Uh, you know what, the
eighteen o one ben they had there had to have
been aircraft aluminium somewhere. But yeah, yeah, you know what,
(29:34):
not being an aircraft history, and I might have to
defer to your wild guests nanotechnology things like that. Well,
nano typ it's all big in eighteen o one. I'm
sure nanotechnology I actually um is closely related to steamings. Yeah,
I mean we're just now hearing about it, but it's
been around for a good two or fifty years. Yep.
(29:55):
Four just didn't want you to know. We are totally kidding,
by the way, before any finishes writing that email, UM
So unfortunately, Yeah, it is true that although Trevithick was
an astounding, astonishing inventor and an innovator, he did not
(30:15):
fully read the success or the rewards of his success, right, Yeah,
because he he met an early end. I guess he
not real early. I guess for the time, he was
about sixty two years old when he when he passed away.
He was twenty nine when he built the Puffing Devil.
Just for okay, twenty nine, that's not comparison. Yeah, sure,
so he's relatively young when he built this thing, but
he only lived until eighteen thirty three. Now that's age
(30:38):
sixty two, which is it's a relatively decent life at
that at that time in our history. But yeah, I
mean to not be able to to see this thing
all the way at the end, you know, because you know,
some of these innovations, like I think that there was
another um groundbreaking locomotive that was put on display in
something like eighteen twenty six or something like that. It
(30:58):
was called the Rocket, and that's the one that most
people think of as being like the most because I
think it won some kind of speed and endurance test
at the time by Robert Stephenson. Yeah, that's the one, Ben.
And you know, prior to that with Trevitis design, I
think it was you know, more of a simple thing.
It was playing smaller loads and it was you know,
it just maybe making routes to and from the mind,
(31:20):
you know, back and forth, just carrying coal and you
know whatever, the supplies weren't necessary. It wasn't so much
that you know, this is a viable transportation for humans really,
you know, to carry them across continents or anything. Until
after um, after the rocket design trevit that did continue
working on boiler designs up to his very last days.
(31:44):
He was at the Jenny Hall Limited Company uh and designing.
I think he got up to a one and fifty
pounds per square and spoiler um. When he passed away
in eighteen thirty three. Uh, he left a legacy that
some people would would be tempted to dismiss or so
(32:05):
it was forgotten. But you guys know car stuff. We
do not end on a down note because we have
some good news for anyone who's interested in seeing the
Puffing Devil live and in action. Which sounds crazy, right,
no cameras around back then. It was burned down, right,
I mean it was anything burned to the ground. So
how could they possibly have a have a working puffing Devil? Well,
(32:29):
somebody has has gone to the effort of building a
replica of the of the Puffing Devil, and this thing
actually operates on the city streets of Camborne. At least
once once a year, as we'll talk about in a second.
But this this replica project, I think it took about
about two or three years to build, right or no.
One one and a half years to build total. So
(32:49):
it took just about as long as it did to
build the original because you know, there were no working
drawings of this thing. You know, there's no um, you know,
engineering graphs to follow or anything like that. I mean,
the guy probably just you know, as I said, he
just cobbled together in a in a shed somewhere. Um.
So the people that built it, you know, they were
going basing it on you know, drawings, you know that.
(33:09):
I mean just not not not engineering drawings, but just
drawings that people have done of the event or of
the eyewitness account exactly that's right, and descriptions of what happened.
And they knew what, you know, trevisis steam engine designs
look like, because they still had those. But the matter
of the difficult matter was just putting it onto a
wagon and making it work and making it look like
(33:30):
the original. And they did this for the bi centennial,
the two anniversary of the initial running of the Puffing Devil,
so in two thousand one. They ran this because of
you know, the one initial journey. Yeah, and uh, here's
the cool thing to me. That's one of the coolest
things about the Puffing Devil. You can go on YouTube
(33:52):
right now and watch people take this thing out and
write it. And I'm gonna go ahead and let you know, guys.
It looks very strange. It does, and it really seats,
and you'll see it on the in something called the
Camborn Trevithic Day Parade and Trevithic just in case you're wondering,
it's t r e v I t h I c K,
(34:15):
so do a keyword search for that and you'll likely
find it. But there's a there's an um a site
called Trevithic Day dot org dot uk which you can
go to, which talks all about this annual Trevithic Day
that they hold that they held UM I say held
because this year's event or celebration has already happened. It
happened in late April of two thousand fourteen, and it's
(34:35):
basically it's an annual celebration of the heritage and mining
heritage of the area with a focus on Richard Trevithick
and UM because he's the you know, I guess the
pioneer really of high pressure steam power. And this is huge.
I mean, it was such a turning point and and
such a great development and such an advancement that uh,
you know, I mean, I think that this guy definitely
(34:57):
deserves a parade, definitely deserves a day named after him,
and of course they're very proud of him. Would you
call the Puffing Devil a car though? Oh no, I
would not. Well call it a road locomotive. It's a
well I call it a road locomotive only because that's
a new term to me, and I I think it's cool.
But to me, it's a steam powered wagon. I guess
(35:17):
I'm almost like um kubos the steam with the difference
that this one is controllable. You know that this is nice.
I like a steerable wagon. Yeah, something that you know
you can take out and with reasonable amount of certainty
that you're gonna be able to bring it back home
as well. Reasonable don't don't stop to drink, that's right,
don't leave the fire going, yeah, oh, for Pete's sake. Um. So,
(35:41):
this I think is the end of our story about
the man known as the Cornish giant yea, and I
was so much more. There's so much more, and it's
a fascinating journey. I think because you and I, UM
and a lot of you guys listening out there too,
are always interested in the history of the automobile. You know,
(36:05):
what's this amazing thing that is across the world? Um
for for something that's well known as automotive technology, it's
surprising how many unknown and obscure stories there are about it.
We gotta do that steam engine episode and and there's
no doubt in my mind that this is This is
just like maybe the I don't even want to see
the first step, but this is just another step and
(36:27):
in the progress towards the progression towards uh, the automobile
that we think about, you know when when we we
think about the automobiles starting in eighteen nineties or whatever,
but um, this is this goes back to the late
seventeen hundreds, early eighteen hundreds, and honestly, there's you know,
there's information about stuff that leads up to this prior
to that, you know, another hundred years prior to that.
(36:48):
So it goes way way way back, a lot farther
than you might think that is an excellent point, and Scott,
I hope people enjoyed this episode you got you have
to go to YouTube and check it out. This is
this is one of those ben and you're right, exactly
You're exactly right. You have to see the Puffing Devil
in action to understand why it's called the Puffing Devil,
and it's just an amazing piece of machinery to begin with.
(37:09):
But I I this is one of those episodes where
and we've talked for about forty five minutes now or
something close to that, there's so much more to the story,
and just the Steam story alone is huge. I mean,
I wish we could go into details. I've got so
many notes that you do too. Um, maybe we'll have
to do it sometime in the near future. I think
we have to do a Steam episode, buddy, probably. But
before we do that, this one last thing for today's episode,
(37:32):
and that is listener mail. Let's hear it, okay, Scott.
This comes to us via Facebook from our listener, Lindsay G.
Lindsey says, Hi, guys, I just finished listening to your
podcast about carbs versus fuel injection and I loved it. Well,
thank you, thank you you guys also talked about car
(37:52):
pranks for listener mail. Well. A couple of summers ago,
I worked part time for my school district and worked
mostly with the maintenance and ground staff. We had a
couple of work trucks that we would use, and if
I didn't keep an eye on my truck, occasionally the
guys go into my truck, turned the radio all the
way up, Wiper's full speed events on full heat, blast
harml stuff like that. We also had found a Fred
(38:13):
Jones from Scooby Doo, figuring that would we would try
to play some weird places, such as bucking into him
into a truck seat, sitting them on tailgate, et cetera. Basically,
it was a summer spent pranking the guys back and forth.
Oh and the last part I gotta say. Lindsay points
out that that made me laugh. Somebody was in the
(38:33):
porta potty at their job site and someone else took
the work truck and parked it just right up next
to the door, so we were trapped in a porta potty.
That's bad news. Any kind of quarter petty prank is
bad news. Yeah, I'll be honest with you. I really
try to avoid even going into a porta potty just
(38:54):
the cost benefit there, the risk man just for fear
of what may happen, who knows, among other things. Now,
the thing is that that that email though, that's that's
funny because I mean that sounds like a great summer,
like just a summer spent, you know, with work trucks
and you know, working on the grounds and the groundskeeper
stuff and and uh, all the harmless pranks and all that.
That's just sounds like a good memorable summer. It sounds
(39:16):
like a lot of fun. Yeah, and I always want
to hear about people's prank story harmless pranks. We gonna
we have to do more harmless pranks around the office here.
Do you think? Did you see somebody took that out
of order side off the microwave and replaced it with
reserved for private event? I did not see that. But
you know what that would be maybe a step up
in size from our current conference room. Hey, you know what,
(39:40):
you might not be wrong. Get gets a little crowded
in there, doesn't It gets a little crowded Um. I
think it would be easier if we're all standing maybe. Well,
thank you Lindsay for the email. We appreciate it, and
uh again, that's that's funny. I always love to hear
about listeners with with these harmless pranks, anything that harmed anybody. Yeah,
send that into we just may not read it on
the air. Right. You can find us at Facebook, you
(40:02):
can find us on Twitter. You can listen to every
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For more on this and thousands of other topics is
how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think.
(40:24):
Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.
M
You're behind the Wheel, under the Hood and beyond with
car stuff from house stuff Works dot Com. Everybody, Welcome
to podcast. I'm Scoff and I'm Ben Boland. Ben. Today's
topic is one that you found and that the title
alone had me just just enthralled. I was excited about
this one right away. I don't I didn't know what
(00:22):
it was initially, but but you know, once I dug
into it, I'm even more excited about. Yeah, I was
mystified myself, also drawn in by the title. Ladies and gentlemen,
today we're talking about a very curious vehicle called the
Puffing Devil. Yeah. Intriguing, isn't it. I mean, just just
the sound of that, the puffing Devil. You might try
(00:42):
to think, like, well, who would be so bold is
to name something the puffing Devil? What is that? It
sounds like a dragster maybe or something like that. But
far from it, right right, far from it. This is
actually the world's forst letting. Make sure you this title, right, Scott,
the world's for steam powered road locomotive for passengers or
(01:06):
something like that, something like that. I think a lying
in my notes here, I've got the exact description, but
you're very very close a road locomotive, which is really
really interesting because we find out, you know, as we
go through here that that road locomotives predate um locomotives
that are that were on rails. Right, Yes, what what
we're talking about is a very curious vehicle that happened. Um,
(01:33):
you know, it wasn't the first steam engine by any means.
We know more about the history of steam engines right now.
We're gonna talk about some of that too. I mean,
I've got it going all the way back to the
very first steam engine. We won't we won't dwell on
that too, right, yeah, but we we do want to
put it in context. We'll be talking more about the
inventor Richard Trevitt, who was born in seventeen seventy one.
(01:57):
Uh he was in he was in the Cornwall area
and his father was a mine administrator, and so he
wasn't the best kid in school, but he was pretty
sharp when it came to math, and most of his
learning was a matter of navigating the industrial areas of Cornwall.
(02:22):
Uh So he was always inspired by steam engines, which
is weird because the deal with Cornwall mining at the
time was that the minds themselves were notoriously difficult to
work with because they had to keep pumping water out
of these mines, and to do this they use steam engines,
(02:45):
and as a result, Cornwall became home to so many
steam engines, a preposterous amount for the time. And Richard,
the young Richard trevith Thicke at this time, grew up
around these machines and was fascinated by the Yeah, that's right.
So he's he's seeing these things every day, you know,
kind of hanging out with his dad at work and
and checking out what's going on. And of course there's
(03:06):
maintenance that goes along with all this, and you know
he's he's intrigued by the inner workings of it, because
most kids are. I mean, I think they see something
like that and they want to tear it apart and
see what makes it work. And that's exactly what he
was doing, I think, because he's watching over the shoulder
of people who were tearing them apart and you know,
fixing them, repairing them, because I think these things broke
down an awful lot. And the early steam engines were
used strictly as pumps. Now, when we think of steam engines,
(03:29):
now we think of them as smaller, more mobile devices.
You know, they're able to power, and we don't see
them much anymore of them, to be honest, A lot
of the novelty devices to show the proof of the concept. Yeah,
but I mean in the museums in places like that,
when we see them, we think of them as as
being small, you know, more portable, I guess, And I
know they're big, but portable in the fact that you know,
(03:51):
they're not the size of the building, and they're not
strictly for one use only, which was pumping, because the
initial steam engines they had a regular use and that
was just pumping. That's all they did. They just pumped
water out of wells and that was it because they
were very limited in in what they could do because
of the motion of the thing, the size of the thing, right, Uh,
you know exactly what they did. And all of this
(04:13):
developed relatively quickly. But I mean when I say quickly,
I mean within like a hundred a hundred and fifty years,
which is still relatively quickly. Relatively quickly. That's that's the
key point here. And um man, I where do you
want to start with this, Ben, because we can talk
about steam. I I so want to get to Richard
trevith Ikken and the Puffing Devil and you know all
that that surrounds that, but he kind of comes later
(04:35):
in the story. Really. Yeah, you know, what we should
probably talk about first is just a brief background on
steam engines in general. Okay, real quick, al right. The
first steam engine, the steam engine inventor. His name was
Thomas Nucaman and it was around seventeen or five, I think,
and he was a blacksmith and an inventor when he
when he developed this h this idea, and it was
(04:55):
designed really just to improve the efficiency of water pumps
and mine. So there you go. That was the initial
intent of the steam engine. And it was basically so
that the galleries could be driven or dug out further
underground because the deeper you go, the more they fill
up with water and uh and of course that becomes
a problem. You can't have people down there working when
there's this water continually flowing into the mind. So that's
(05:16):
what they were done doing rather and um, you know,
the idea, you know, kind of hung around for a
long long time before anybody did anything to them. Really,
the guy named James Watt, who we've talked about a
few times on this podcast. Very smart, smart, very smart guy. Yeah.
He he had several improvements on the steam engine, but
those didn't come until about seventeen sixty nine. So we're
(05:37):
talking like a good sixty four sixty five years of
them being relatively inefficient and just again just for pumping
water out of mines, and they will remain that way
for another fifty years, right. Yeah. The Newcoman engine, as
useful as it was, may sound pretty bad and modern
day standards because it had what's called a thermal efficiency
(06:01):
of around one percent and it uh it ate coal,
It devoured coal. This this was a hungry machine and
um one of the problems without of course, is that
it relies on coal and not every place just has coal.
H James Watt, you know, when he was working at
Glasgow University, he put in some changes that made this
(06:26):
far and above a superior engine. One of the things
is that it's uh it's thermal efficiency increased to two
point seven percent as he was working up to four
point five percent, and a lot of this efficiency changed
the potential applications of the steam engine. But that process
(06:49):
wasn't over yet. Because now we have a new guy
coming into the field, you know, and I still want
just for a second, if you don't mind, I want
to talk about WAT for just one more minute here,
maybe a couple of minutes. But um, the whole way
that that what came into contact with the new Coman design.
As you mentioned Glasgow University, right, yeah, I guess he
was working there. I'm not sure exactly what his his
role was an instrument maker. Okay, so he's an instrument maker.
(07:13):
Makes sense then because he had a work bench and
I guess, uh, you know, the some of the stuff
around there that will break down, he would they would
bring in for him to fix. You know. It's like
he was the kind of the handy guy there. Right.
So one of the things that that ends up on
his workbench is a is a small model of new
Comman's steam engine, the pump, right, very small models used
for teaching purpose and a lot of times this thing
(07:35):
would just quit working and and which doesn't say a
whole lot about it, but I mean, I guess, you know,
a little model like that. There's other problems, you know,
the different from the full scale models and everything. But um,
one thing that he realized while he's looking at this thing,
was he realized some of these inefficiencies and this this
new comman design, And he noticed that the cylinder got
really really hot with steam and then it had to
(07:56):
be cooled off during this condensation phase where they would
actually break cold water into the cylinder to bring the
piston back down. And um, you know, this isn't the
how steam engines work podcast by any means, but um,
just giving you a quick thing. You know, like the
steam heats it up, the piston rises up, you have
to spray cold water into it to cool it down,
and that allows the piston to drop back down, along
(08:18):
with a couple of other things. There are other forces
that play there, but um, that's the basic idea behind
the thing. Well, he realized that, you know, if you
didn't have to heat and cool this thing over and
over and over again the same cylinder, that you'd be
able to get a lot more efficiency out of it.
So he decided, you know, to work on a way
to keep the cylinder hot at all times and separate
(08:38):
water cooled condens. Exactly right, So two separate cylinders, and
uh and again I've got well, I went off the
deep end here, But I've got three handwritten pages here
that I'm looking at of notes about, you know, the
improvements and everything, and we're not going to go into that.
Let's let's not do it. Let's save it for another
you know, maybe how steam engines work podcast. So I've
got great notes to that. I also have too many
(09:00):
notes on how steam engines were. And then here's what happened.
He took the Yeah, we both do. We got piles
of notes here. So what happened was that, you know,
he developed this idea and really got the ideas patented.
I think I said around seventeen sixty nine, so late
and late in the game, I guess for steam. But
um Watt then had to find a way to finance
his new project. So he works with this guy named
(09:22):
John Roebuck who's a mine owner, and Roebuck takes something
like two thirds of the share of the patent of
the steam engine of his you know, redesigned steam engine.
And then four years later, I guess, this Roebuck guy
goes bankrupt, you know, because of something that happened in
the minds or something like that, and he sells his
two thirds share to a guy named Matthew Bolton and
(09:42):
Bolton worked with Watt and they formed a They built
the world's first factory that produced steam engines, and that
was in I think it was in Birmingham, England, and
so the company called Bolton and Watt. And you can
still go and see this factory. It's still there, um,
you know, obviously not working, but I don't know if
it's a museum at this point or not, um, something
(10:03):
like that. I think you can still see it. A
little side note here, Uh, the miners were very unhappy
with Bolton and Watt fairly quickly because they were still
saving a little bit of money, but they they began
charging users of the engine, uh something that was about
one third of the amount they would have saved on
(10:26):
the coal because the Watt engine used less coal, but
you had to pay them. Well it's like a weird text.
Yeah it's tax and uh that wasn't you know. That
wasn't all of it. Because also they enforced the patent heavily,
so no reverse engineering the Watt engine. So people people
(10:47):
were not super happy about it, and they kept trying
to figure out how to make this just different enough
to skirt around the patent. Uh, so people had I
guess the reason I'm saying this is people had a
present an immediate motivation to improve the steam engine, quick
(11:07):
Fasten and her and Troth it was one of them.
And and you know, along the way, of course, what
is still working on an improved design. So he's still
like doing things and I'd tell you just to just
a list of the things he's doing. He comes up
with a double acting steam engine that that now is
like is really efficient because it's powering the piston up
and powering the pistons back down again. And you know,
we'll talk about that again in the Steam Engine and
(11:29):
podcast will inevitably do at some point. But um, he
also found a way to convert and this is a
big one, Ben. He found a way to convert the
linear motion of the piston into a rotating motion. And
he developed what developed the the sun and planetary gear
set that we you know, we see in a lot
of different things now. So um, you know, automobiles, it
was huge for automobiles, huge for locomotives of course, which
(11:52):
is what we're getting to. UM. And he also developed
um an automatic speak control like a centric centrifical or
think they called it um a flyball governor for the
steam engine. So this is all kind of evened out
the power and um, all these developments are happening. Other
people are saying, I still need to get around these
taxes because this this what guy is is he's running
(12:13):
the game. I mean, he got he's got the patent
on everything, and he's further developing. He's got the factory backing,
you know, behind him, and he's the Walter Wider of
steam engines. Well and anybody that worked in the factory,
because I don't think that I don't actually don't think
that he um he actually developed the planetary gear said,
I think it was another guy. There was a Scottish
engineer that came up with it, but he was an
employee of the factory, of the Bolton and Watt factory,
(12:35):
and therefore his patent fell under UM, well, he wasn't
really able to patent it. I think what was the
one who patented the design? Kind of an Edison situation. Well,
that happens in a lot of big companies, and so
that happened with this one. So you know, there's this
factory that's really just churning out ideas and other people
are saying, how can I get around this? I've got
to do something completely different. And that was where Richard
(12:55):
Trevithy came in because he had an innovation that was
was going to bring it even further into the into
the future. I guess yes. And before we tell you
the rest of the story, I'd like to ask you
a question, Scott, or tell you to tell you a
really short story. Let's go back to the show before
(13:16):
you head out Canadaway, because there's a very interesting part
of this story. So we've already set the stage with
what who is make no mistake, a prodigy. He's a genius.
He is an amazing inventor, even if he isn't the
most uh people oriented person. You know who he hated though?
(13:38):
Who's that? Teff I? Betty did? Because he's got you know,
here's a guy that takes his great design and just
improves on it a little bit more. Because you know,
patents were starting to run out around around the year
eighteen hundred and so that means that you know, we're
just now breaking into the nineteenth century and and um,
you know, people are really starting to be able to
improve on on the watt design even more because you
(13:59):
know this why and I was want one more time
just mentioned this because this is critical. You know that
rotary movement thing, you know, like I mentioned, well that
and you know how he found a way to convert
that linear motion into rotary motion. It was so huge,
Ben that was that was an amazing advancement because it
could finally be used to drive other machines. Like it
(14:19):
changed the application of the engine. Yeah, you're not tied
to the elements like you were before because or your location,
your physical location, because you know, these mining pumps were
strictly for minds in their place there and that was
where they ran. Well, now you could you could have
a um a device that would they would have a
rotary motion you would need for grinding. But you didn't
have to be near a river that ran a grist mill.
(14:42):
You know, you didn't have to have you know, wind
and water wheels to do things. You know, before you
did have to have that, and now you didn't because
these pumps are these uh, the steam engines were strictly
for pumps prior to that. Now they could be used
to drive wheels, and wheels were huge and then people
that got I guess people's mental wheels spang and decided that,
you know, maybe there's way I could use this for transportation.
(15:05):
Let me let me dovetail into that here. So one
of Trevior thicks big big claims or big things that
he's known for rights big improvements, is that he believed
there should be high pressure steam involved. Right, That's what
we left off at I guess before and yeah, and
(15:26):
he wanted a boiler that made this pressure possible. But
what was against this? I just want to I just
wanted to read this Lindson quotation. What was implacably opposed
to this development? Which he considered foolhardy and dangerous, famously
declaring that Trevor Thicks should be hanged for his efforts.
(15:47):
So nice work. Oh thanks man, Well I was there.
I am pretty took us there. Thanks, But point being,
what was uh what was in sense? Can you imagine
saying this guy I should be hanged. That's amazing. I mean,
because he developed, he improved on your design. That's why
a little bit of sour grapes there, I think a
(16:08):
little bit. So the uh, the this thing that he
is working on, that Trevior Thick is working on ultimately
does become a game changer, because this thing that Trevior
Thick designs ultimately does become much It's like a paradigm shift,
you know. It's it's so much bigger than uh maybe
(16:32):
even what the most optimistic people at the time thought
could be. Well, I mean, this is this is I
can't stress this enough, man, This is this is before
the steam locomotive. This is people just didn't have any
other way to get around other than you know, walking
or or horseprint transportation or gravity. You know, if you're
at the top of the hill, you could, sure, you
could roll down the hill. That's fine, But now here's
(16:53):
the way that you can power yourself up and over
the hill. And it's brand new to everybody. And to
put yourself in that mindset like this has got to
be incredible amazing to see something powering itself forward. It's
moving on rails or or you know, as in trevithis
early design, not even on rails. It was moving down
the road, you know, the road that was intended for
horses to walk on. Right, just cast yourself back there
(17:15):
if you can, and imagine seeing a horseless carriage for
the first time. Your first question is, where the hell
is the horse and then how did they fit it
in there? Are they burning that horse for energy? Um?
So okay, so this boiler, this is really what it
all comes back to, Uh, that this boiler is able
(17:38):
to withstand the pressure of all this steam. So Trevithick
divide designs the spoiler for its strength, and because he
doesn't have a flat base, he puts the fire in
the flu inside of the boiler using a U shaped
fire tube. So this maximize the surface area. And uh,
(18:00):
well you know what I got. I got a little
something added that if you got one second, let me
just break out here if it just first second, because
I found a BBC a little short on on high
pressure steam innovation and Trevioris designs here and you're you
just talked about both of them right in one sentence.
And that's why I figured I just stopped right here because, um,
the two things. Now you can look this up. It's
(18:21):
BBC the Genius of invention. You know, Trevithis innovation something
like that. The two things, two big things that really
led to his success were the fire tube that you
mentioned is U shape? Uh? Now in the demonstration that
I saw, the guy had a kettle, a tea kettle
and had one regular tea kettle and one that had
this head of fire tube through it. It was just
a metal tube goes right through the middle of it,
(18:42):
all the way down to the fire. You could look
right through it. Uh. The idea is that there's more
surface area that's being heated and it has greater contact
with the water surrounding it and uh and therefore boils faster.
So he had a very efficient boiler system in that way.
And the other thing is the cylindrical boiler design. Now
you know in a in a train, we see the
(19:02):
boiler at the at the on the top of the train.
I guess this lane horizontally and that giant tube black
thing on a on a steam locomotive is the boiler.
And the piston is way down by the wheels. It's
a small little thing down at the very front of
the train that you wouldn't even expect. I mean you
kind of think of the cylinder now when we think
of engines, that's where the piston is. Right. You think
there's a giant piston in there that's driving the wheels.
(19:24):
But that's not the case. That's all water and fire,
and that it's loaded with tubes. These tubes that carry um,
you know, we'll carry heat and they also carry the
boiled water, I mean the steam you know what. We
won't get into exactly what they do, but it's loaded
with tubes. And the cylindrical boiler design was big because
(19:45):
the Wat design boiler was square. And the square design,
if you if you put a lot of pressure into
a square um you know, welded together box, I guess, uh,
the sides, the sides are gonna bulge, the teams are
all gonna pop open. But in a cylinder that you
can put an immense amount of pressure inside there and
(20:05):
it will hold. And and that's exactly what Trevior Hick
was was, you know, playing on this idea that he
could go with the high pressure steam. Watts design couldn't
handle it. Yeah, And the invention of this boiler did
more than just eclipse Watts square design. It. Uh, it
even did away with the condenser. So without this condenser, right, Uh,
(20:30):
the stuff from Trevior Thicks engine, the uh stuff they're
expelling is puffing out directly into the atmosphere, which gives
it this name, the puffing devil. Yeah. It was either
coal which was burning or would I'm not sure which
it was. It was likely coal, if I had to guess.
And uh and also some steam. There's a little bit
(20:51):
of steam that that's let off there as well. So yeah,
it gives it this this appearance. But people when they
see something like this coming, they must have thought the
world is anyam ben? I mean when they see something
like that, it's like this side this, um, I don't know,
it's almost like a like a like a monster coming
down the road. Oh well, one thing, let's be clear.
When he first built his Trevithick engines, uh, he was
(21:15):
putting them still in mining operations, and they had fantastic
pound per square inch. We're talking on the order of
twenty five, which sounds so unimpressive today, but let us consider,
you know, the other things are around like seven or fourteen.
You know, well, these are these are pieces of metal
that are hammered out by hand by a blacksmith on
(21:36):
an anvil, and they're they're bolted together and you know,
they're just not they're not sealed up the way that
we see them now and you know from modern factory, right. Yeah,
and uh so his first one was installed at a
place called Cook's kitchen mine in eighteen hundred and eighteen
seventy it was still running, Scott. This engine was so powerful.
(21:58):
The treviorth Thick is looking at it one day and
just you know, watching this monster, uh puff smoke and
poor steam and and and eat through the ground in
a mind and he says, man, that thing is strong.
That that thing is probably powerful enough too, And then
it hits him, maybe it can propel itself. Well, he
(22:21):
probably saw the rotary motion of a of a drive
wheel or something like that and realized like, okay, I'm
I'm looking at this horse wagon going by, and here's
the drive wheel. Wait a second, I'm putting these two
and two together. Why do we even need that horse
out front? Right? So I'm sure that that's kind of
the way it probably went, you know. It's just uh,
who knows. Maybe you got into the ale one evening
and he's like laying around, you know, kind of dreaming, daydreaming,
(22:42):
thinking about what would be really cool, and uh, I
don't know, this is all we're just guessing, right, It's
that's right in a moment like that this weekend. So anyway,
so he's probably thinking like, how can I make this work?
And he just kind of, you know, cobbled together something really,
I mean more than more than that. I mean, but
it's a it's a big impressive machine obviously, but um,
(23:03):
you know, to be able to think like that, I'm
gonna put one of these steam engines on top of
a wagon really at that point, but with with steel wheels,
and we're gonna try to make this thing drive, and
we're gonna drive it through the town. It's gonna require
several operators, you know, because someone's gotta steer, someone's gotta
stoke the flames. Someone's got to be in charge of
the bypass valve just in case too much pressure builds up.
(23:26):
And it's got to be switch a few different people. So,
you know, he finally gets all this together, and it's
somewhere around uh, December of night where I'm sorry, December
of eighteen oh one. Yeah, it's uh, it's I've seen
it described as by Christmas Eve time leading up to Christmas. Yeah,
and they've been working on since November of eighteen hundred.
(23:47):
Uh So in Christmas Eve they start running the Puffing Devil.
But here's the thing they improved. He improves it the
entire year he's working on it. Uh. The boiler by
this time, by the first run is doing forty seven
pounds for square not bad, not bad. He's got a
lot of pressure going in this thing. And um, you know,
the first drive, I guess the first demonstration was December
(24:08):
twenty four, so Christmas Eve in eighteen o one. As
we mentioned, it's the first demonstration of transportation powered by steam.
That's that's super impressive as a as a practical method
of transportation. Yeah, I guess we're failed experiments before. Yeah,
and we've talked about one of these guys, right, the
Nicholas Joseph Kuban design, you know maybe and uh, I
(24:31):
think they're around seventeen seventy. There was a steam powered wagon.
Now I don't know if it was really the same
type of thing, because, um, this one that we're talking about,
Trevithicks design was steerable and I don't think the other
one was steerable. I think it just went and in fact,
it went through a wall, I believe, right, So that
was no good and I think it destroyed itself on
his first outing. But this one I believe he I
(24:53):
don't think he made it up to the top of
the hill. He's trying to go up a hill called
Camborne Hill, I believe, and Camborne Hill, which is by
the way of folk song now based on based on
this initial trip. Um, I don't think he made it
up the hill on the first attempt. I think that's
what happened, right, So he didn't make it up. But
he and the guys that he was with, I think
he were like seven or eight guys on this thing,
and you know, a yeah, probably having a big Christmas
(25:15):
Eve party up the hill. I probably could have, yeah,
maybe if they had lost a few past news on
the way, right, But um, I had to turn around
and come back home. And then I think it only
last this thing, this uh, this this original uh puffing
Devil only lasted a few days, right, because there was
an incident they had pulled into. I think it was
(25:37):
I want to say, it's an and I don't know
the details right in front of me, Ben, but I
remember the story that they pulled into an end, I think,
and they're gonna have, you know, have a couple of drinks,
I think, and they left it out in a barn,
is that right? Uh? Yeah, So they they had they
had some disasters didn't last to much past December. Um.
I had heard that one of their they had three journeys.
(25:59):
I think on it, E that's it. I think it's
just maybe that was what I was thinking of the three.
I don't know if it lasted three days. Maybe it's
a little longer than that, but three journeys. So they
one day, Trevith Thick and one of his buddies go
out and they're trying to visit a place called to
Hittie House. T e h I d y it's about
(26:19):
four kilometers away. Um. Trevith Thicks tending the engine, Vivian
is steering. Uh. They hit a gully in the road,
steering handle wrenches from Vivian's hands, and the devil overturns. Uh.
So passersbys and other people helped push this back right,
(26:39):
push us back to its right way because he's in
a gully right right. And so they say, okay, this
thing is messed up. You know, let's just call declare
victory for the day because the engine broke down. So
they go to the hotel and they have a couple
of beers. Public house, I think it's what they call
a public house, you know. Drowned drown your anger and
(27:01):
some uh, some pines of ale and uh. It turns
out that either a fire was still burning in the
Puffing Devil's furnace or the water evaporated but the metal
parts became red hot, and then that combined with a
wooden wagon, right and a barn that was probably parked
(27:21):
in right, made everything burned. Yeah. Yeah, so the whole
thing burned to the ground. Of course, there's nothing left.
He can't really salvage something like that. I mean, I
don't know if he ever even really attempted to rebuild
the Puffing Devil himself, because he was really he was
really working on the idea behind steam locomotives, and he
wanted to get this thing on rails because for I
(27:42):
believe Ben, I think it was something like, I want
to say, like two hundred years prior to this, horses
had been pulling wagons on wheels on rails, and you know,
so there's this like real primitive railway system, but it
wasn't it wasn't steam powered. And I mean really, for
a long long time they were pulling things on rails
because they knew it was an efficient way to do it.
(28:02):
It's just they didn't have the the mobile power to
be able to handle something like her to do it.
And that's exactly why Trevithicks design, you know this uh,
this high high pressure um you know, relatively small design
uh steam engine was able to be used for for
this application and it fit perfectly. And that's exactly what
he did because he designed. Now, Trevithick is credited with
(28:25):
building the first full scale working railway system locomotive ever
and it was in it was in the UK, it
was it was demonstrated in Wales. I believe the first time,
right and um, the first journey ever was something and
I think it was in February of eighteen o four,
in late February of eighteen o four, so that's three
years after two and a half years after the Puffing
(28:48):
Devil debuted. So this is a this is a huge advancement. Yeah,
he's a mover and his shaker. I do also want
to point out that the finished engine for the Puffing
Devil weighed about one and a half whoa because you know,
I think of the kind of materials they're working with.
They weren't working with aluminium. There's no carbon fiber, there's
no carbon fiber another five or six years before carbon
(29:11):
fiber has developed. So, uh, we've got a little bit
of a downturn in the episode though, because uh, you're
gonna let that go the five or six years coming.
I'm gonna let it go. Okay, Well, what about like
aircraft aluminium something like that? Uh, you know what, the
eighteen o one ben they had there had to have
been aircraft aluminium somewhere. But yeah, yeah, you know what,
(29:34):
not being an aircraft history, and I might have to
defer to your wild guests nanotechnology things like that. Well,
nano typ it's all big in eighteen o one. I'm
sure nanotechnology I actually um is closely related to steamings. Yeah,
I mean we're just now hearing about it, but it's
been around for a good two or fifty years. Yep.
(29:55):
Four just didn't want you to know. We are totally kidding,
by the way, before any finishes writing that email, UM
So unfortunately, Yeah, it is true that although Trevithick was
an astounding, astonishing inventor and an innovator, he did not
(30:15):
fully read the success or the rewards of his success, right, Yeah,
because he he met an early end. I guess he
not real early. I guess for the time, he was
about sixty two years old when he when he passed away.
He was twenty nine when he built the Puffing Devil.
Just for okay, twenty nine, that's not comparison. Yeah, sure,
so he's relatively young when he built this thing, but
he only lived until eighteen thirty three. Now that's age
(30:38):
sixty two, which is it's a relatively decent life at
that at that time in our history. But yeah, I
mean to not be able to to see this thing
all the way at the end, you know, because you know,
some of these innovations, like I think that there was
another um groundbreaking locomotive that was put on display in
something like eighteen twenty six or something like that. It
(30:58):
was called the Rocket, and that's the one that most
people think of as being like the most because I
think it won some kind of speed and endurance test
at the time by Robert Stephenson. Yeah, that's the one, Ben.
And you know, prior to that with Trevitis design, I
think it was you know, more of a simple thing.
It was playing smaller loads and it was you know,
it just maybe making routes to and from the mind,
(31:20):
you know, back and forth, just carrying coal and you
know whatever, the supplies weren't necessary. It wasn't so much
that you know, this is a viable transportation for humans really,
you know, to carry them across continents or anything. Until
after um, after the rocket design trevit that did continue
working on boiler designs up to his very last days.
(31:44):
He was at the Jenny Hall Limited Company uh and designing.
I think he got up to a one and fifty
pounds per square and spoiler um. When he passed away
in eighteen thirty three. Uh, he left a legacy that
some people would would be tempted to dismiss or so
(32:05):
it was forgotten. But you guys know car stuff. We
do not end on a down note because we have
some good news for anyone who's interested in seeing the
Puffing Devil live and in action. Which sounds crazy, right,
no cameras around back then. It was burned down, right,
I mean it was anything burned to the ground. So
how could they possibly have a have a working puffing Devil? Well,
(32:29):
somebody has has gone to the effort of building a
replica of the of the Puffing Devil, and this thing
actually operates on the city streets of Camborne. At least
once once a year, as we'll talk about in a second.
But this this replica project, I think it took about
about two or three years to build, right or no.
One one and a half years to build total. So
(32:49):
it took just about as long as it did to
build the original because you know, there were no working
drawings of this thing. You know, there's no um, you know,
engineering graphs to follow or anything like that. I mean,
the guy probably just you know, as I said, he
just cobbled together in a in a shed somewhere. Um.
So the people that built it, you know, they were
going basing it on you know, drawings, you know that.
(33:09):
I mean just not not not engineering drawings, but just
drawings that people have done of the event or of
the eyewitness account exactly that's right, and descriptions of what happened.
And they knew what, you know, trevisis steam engine designs
look like, because they still had those. But the matter
of the difficult matter was just putting it onto a
wagon and making it work and making it look like
(33:30):
the original. And they did this for the bi centennial,
the two anniversary of the initial running of the Puffing Devil,
so in two thousand one. They ran this because of
you know, the one initial journey. Yeah, and uh, here's
the cool thing to me. That's one of the coolest
things about the Puffing Devil. You can go on YouTube
(33:52):
right now and watch people take this thing out and
write it. And I'm gonna go ahead and let you know, guys.
It looks very strange. It does, and it really seats,
and you'll see it on the in something called the
Camborn Trevithic Day Parade and Trevithic just in case you're wondering,
it's t r e v I t h I c K,
(34:15):
so do a keyword search for that and you'll likely
find it. But there's a there's an um a site
called Trevithic Day dot org dot uk which you can
go to, which talks all about this annual Trevithic Day
that they hold that they held UM I say held
because this year's event or celebration has already happened. It
happened in late April of two thousand fourteen, and it's
(34:35):
basically it's an annual celebration of the heritage and mining
heritage of the area with a focus on Richard Trevithick
and UM because he's the you know, I guess the
pioneer really of high pressure steam power. And this is huge.
I mean, it was such a turning point and and
such a great development and such an advancement that uh,
you know, I mean, I think that this guy definitely
(34:57):
deserves a parade, definitely deserves a day named after him,
and of course they're very proud of him. Would you
call the Puffing Devil a car though? Oh no, I
would not. Well call it a road locomotive. It's a
well I call it a road locomotive only because that's
a new term to me, and I I think it's cool.
But to me, it's a steam powered wagon. I guess
(35:17):
I'm almost like um kubos the steam with the difference
that this one is controllable. You know that this is nice.
I like a steerable wagon. Yeah, something that you know
you can take out and with reasonable amount of certainty
that you're gonna be able to bring it back home
as well. Reasonable don't don't stop to drink, that's right,
don't leave the fire going, yeah, oh, for Pete's sake. Um. So,
(35:41):
this I think is the end of our story about
the man known as the Cornish giant yea, and I
was so much more. There's so much more, and it's
a fascinating journey. I think because you and I, UM
and a lot of you guys listening out there too,
are always interested in the history of the automobile. You know,
(36:05):
what's this amazing thing that is across the world? Um
for for something that's well known as automotive technology, it's
surprising how many unknown and obscure stories there are about it.
We gotta do that steam engine episode and and there's
no doubt in my mind that this is This is
just like maybe the I don't even want to see
the first step, but this is just another step and
(36:27):
in the progress towards the progression towards uh, the automobile
that we think about, you know when when we we
think about the automobiles starting in eighteen nineties or whatever,
but um, this is this goes back to the late
seventeen hundreds, early eighteen hundreds, and honestly, there's you know,
there's information about stuff that leads up to this prior
to that, you know, another hundred years prior to that.
(36:48):
So it goes way way way back, a lot farther
than you might think that is an excellent point, and Scott,
I hope people enjoyed this episode you got you have
to go to YouTube and check it out. This is
this is one of those ben and you're right, exactly
You're exactly right. You have to see the Puffing Devil
in action to understand why it's called the Puffing Devil,
and it's just an amazing piece of machinery to begin with.
(37:09):
But I I this is one of those episodes where
and we've talked for about forty five minutes now or
something close to that, there's so much more to the story,
and just the Steam story alone is huge. I mean,
I wish we could go into details. I've got so
many notes that you do too. Um, maybe we'll have
to do it sometime in the near future. I think
we have to do a Steam episode, buddy, probably. But
before we do that, this one last thing for today's episode,
(37:32):
and that is listener mail. Let's hear it, okay, Scott.
This comes to us via Facebook from our listener, Lindsay G.
Lindsey says, Hi, guys, I just finished listening to your
podcast about carbs versus fuel injection and I loved it. Well,
thank you, thank you you guys also talked about car
(37:52):
pranks for listener mail. Well. A couple of summers ago,
I worked part time for my school district and worked
mostly with the maintenance and ground staff. We had a
couple of work trucks that we would use, and if
I didn't keep an eye on my truck, occasionally the
guys go into my truck, turned the radio all the
way up, Wiper's full speed events on full heat, blast
harml stuff like that. We also had found a Fred
(38:13):
Jones from Scooby Doo, figuring that would we would try
to play some weird places, such as bucking into him
into a truck seat, sitting them on tailgate, et cetera. Basically,
it was a summer spent pranking the guys back and forth.
Oh and the last part I gotta say. Lindsay points
out that that made me laugh. Somebody was in the
(38:33):
porta potty at their job site and someone else took
the work truck and parked it just right up next
to the door, so we were trapped in a porta potty.
That's bad news. Any kind of quarter petty prank is
bad news. Yeah, I'll be honest with you. I really
try to avoid even going into a porta potty just
(38:54):
the cost benefit there, the risk man just for fear
of what may happen, who knows, among other things. Now,
the thing is that that that email though, that's that's
funny because I mean that sounds like a great summer,
like just a summer spent, you know, with work trucks
and you know, working on the grounds and the groundskeeper
stuff and and uh, all the harmless pranks and all that.
That's just sounds like a good memorable summer. It sounds
(39:16):
like a lot of fun. Yeah, and I always want
to hear about people's prank story harmless pranks. We gonna
we have to do more harmless pranks around the office here.
Do you think? Did you see somebody took that out
of order side off the microwave and replaced it with
reserved for private event? I did not see that. But
you know what that would be maybe a step up
in size from our current conference room. Hey, you know what,
(39:40):
you might not be wrong. Get gets a little crowded
in there, doesn't It gets a little crowded Um. I
think it would be easier if we're all standing maybe. Well,
thank you Lindsay for the email. We appreciate it, and
uh again, that's that's funny. I always love to hear
about listeners with with these harmless pranks, anything that harmed anybody. Yeah,
send that into we just may not read it on
the air. Right. You can find us at Facebook, you
(40:02):
can find us on Twitter. You can listen to every
single podcast we have ever made on our fantastic website,
car Stuff Show dot com, and you can send us
an email directly. We are car stuff at Discovery dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics is
how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think.
(40:24):
Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.
M
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Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
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