Richard Trevithick

Richard Trevithick was a Cornish engineer and inventor who built the first high-pressure steam engine and, in 1804, ran the worlds first railway steam locomotive, hauling a load of iron and passengers along a tramway in Wales. Where James Watts earlier engines used low-pressure steam and remained large and stationary, Trevithicks high-pressure design was compact and powerful enough to move under its own power, a breakthrough that made steam traction for transport and industry possible for the first time. His locomotives and portable engines were used in mining, agriculture and early rail transport, and his high-pressure principle became the standard on which the entire steam age of the nineteenth century was built. Trevithick died in poverty despite his inventions, but his high-pressure engine is recognized as one of the pivotal advances in the harnessing of steam power.