Richard Trevithick – Father of the Steam Locomotive – Died on 22 April 1833

Richard Trevithick was a tireless inventor and he constantly developed new ideas. He didn’t feel too bad if things went wrong, but moved forward. The list of his patents is long. Money was a secondary matter to him, and thus it’s not a big surprise that he died as a poor man in 1833. In...

A Short Story About John Blenkinsop’s Locomotives

According to my source, exactly 210 years ago, on 12 August 1812, John Blenkinsop's locomotives began running on the railway between Middleton and Leeds. The engine was probably Salamanca, at least I would like to think that way. This is a short story about her and her sister engines. Samuel Smiles writes in The Life...

George Stephenson – the Father of Railways

George Stephenson was born on 9 June 1781 in Wylam. If you have at least some knowledge about a railway history, you must have heard of him. He was fighting for locomotive engines against fixed engines on railways on his own, when all the contemporary leading engineers as well as public opinion were against him....

Richard Trevithick Was Born 250 Years Ago

Richard Trevithick, an engineer and inventor, was born on 13 April 1771. I am not writing a long, detailed story now, but this is just the first story of the planned series of five. The second one will be published in December, third one sometimes in 2022, fourth one in April 2023, on the 190th...

Cambridge Museum of Technology – My Visit in Photos

I visited the Cambridge Museum of Technology on 30 October 2019 after a month of re-opening the museum. So my timing was perfect. I spent there for four hours seeing most of the site and photographing and studying the history of the Old Sewage Pumping Station and the industrial history of Cambridge. This post is...

A Photo Story About the S/S Great Britain – a Ship That Returned Home 50 Years Ago

The 19th of July is a special date for the S/S Great Britain. She was launched on that date in 1843 and on that date in 1970 she returned to the dock where she was built, Great Western Dockyard in Bristol. The S/S Great Britain is a museum ship and I have visited there three...

Thomas Savery and His Pump

Thomas Savery was an important link in the history of inventing a steam engine. He was working with his device at the same time with Denis Papin and Thomas Newcomen. Savery was a military engineer and inventor. He died on 15 May 1715. So, I missed the actual anniversary date of his death a bit,...

Cyclopaedia à la TMTWNBBFN, Part IV: Steph(v)enson

Cyclopaedia à la The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing is a series of articles about songs by a London based band The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing. Or to be precise, this series is not about their songs as such, but short stories about people or things that they...