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Born in Warren, Mass., July 2, 1759. Died near Belfast, Me., January 20, 1849.
Graduated from Harvard College in 1781, Read was a tutor at Harvard for four years. In 1788 he began experimenting to discover some way of utilizing the steam engine for propelling boats and carriages.
114 visits
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Oliver Evans
Born in 1755 or 1756, in Newport, Del. Died in Philadelphia, April 21, 1819.
Little has been preserved respecting the early history of Oliver Evans, who has been aptly styled “The Watt of America.” His parents were farming people, and he had only an ordinary common-school education. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a wheelwright or wagonmaker, and continued his meager education by studying at night time by the light that he made by burning chips and shavings in the fireplace.
78 visits
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Richard Trevithick
Born in Illogan, in the west of Cornwall, England, April 13, 1771. Died in Dartford, Kent, April 22, 1833.
In 1780 he built a double-acting high-pressure engine with a crank, for Cook’s Kitchen mine. This was known as the Puffer, from the noise that it made, and it soon came into general use in Cornwall and South Wales, a successful rival of the low-pressure steam vacuum engine of Watt.
96 visits
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Thomas Blanchard
Born in Sutton, Mass., June 24, 1788. Died, April 16, 1864.
Blanchard was a prolific inventor, having taken out no less than thirty or forty patents for as many different inventions. He did not reap great benefit from his labors, for many of his inventions scarcely paid the cost of getting them up, while others were appropriated without payment to him, or even giving him credit.
103 visits
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William Murdock
Born in Bellow Mill, near Old Cumnock, Ayrshire, Scotland, August 21, 1754. Died at Sycamore Hill, November 15, 1839.
When he was twenty-three years of age he entered the employment of the famous engineering firm of Boulton & Watt, at Soho, and there remained throughout his active life.
Watt recognized in him a valuable assistant, and his services were jealously regarded. On his part he devoted himself unreservedly to the interests of his employers.
127 visits
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Carl Benz
Born, November 26, 1844, at Karlsruhe, Baden, Germany.
Died, April 4, 1929, Ladenburg, Germany
In 1880 he began to commercialize a two-cycle stationary engine. In 1883 he organized his business as Benz & Co., and produced his first vehicle in 1884. In the beginning of 1885 his three-wheeled vehicle ran through the streets of Mannheim, Germany, attracting much attention with its noisy exhaust. This was the subject of his patent dated January 29, 1886, claimed by him to be the first German patent on a light oil motor vehicle. This embodied a horizontal flywheel belt transmission through a differential and two chains to the wheels; but it is noteworthy primarily as having embodied a four-cycle, water jacketed, three-quarter horse-power engine, with electric ignition.
68 visits
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It was called the 'Locomotion.' George Stephenson stood ready to drive it as soon as the trucks, which a stationary engine was lowering down the slope by means of a wire rope, had been attached to it. In the first of these trucks came the Directors of the Railway Company and their friends, followed by twenty-one trucks (all open to the sky, like ordinary goods-trucks), loaded with various passengers, and finally six more waggons of coal. Such was the first train. A man on horseback, carrying a flag, having taken up his position in front of the 'Locomotion' to head the procession, the starting word was given, and with a hiss of steam, half drowned in the shouting of the crowd, the first railway journey ever made in England was begun.
816 visits
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Original Wright Biplane
488 visits
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Thomas A Edison
310 visits
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Of the numerous American automotive pioneers, perhaps among the best known are Charles and Frank Duryea. Beginning their work of automobile building in Springfield, Massachusetts, and after much rebuilding, they constructed their first successful vehicle in 1892 and 1893.
578 visits
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Of the numerous American automotive pioneers, perhaps among the best known are Charles and Frank Duryea. Beginning their work of automobile building in Springfield, Massachusetts, and after much rebuilding, they constructed their first successful vehicle in 1892 and 1893.
698 visits
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Thomas A Edison
983 visits
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Robert Fulton [1765-1815]
Robert Fulton was born of poor parents in 1765, in Little Britain, Pa. His father having died when the boy was only three years old, his mother took charge of his education. She taught him herself until he was eight and then sent him to school. But he had no liking for books, and made slow progress. Drawing and mechanical devices absorbed his interest, and nothing gave him greater delight than to visit the shops of mechanics and there with his own hands to work out his new ideas.
1069 visits
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Inventor of the Electric Telegraph
In a short time he had worked out on paper the whole scheme of transmitting thought over long distances by means of electricity. And now began twelve toilsome years of struggle to devise machinery for his invention. To provide for his three motherless children, Morse had to devote to painting much time that he otherwise would have spent in perfecting the mechanical appliances for his telegraph. His progress therefore was slow and painful, but he persistently continued in the midst of discouraging conditions.
664 visits
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Edison with his Phonograph
In 1878 Mr Edison made a number of phonographs, which were exhibited in America and Europe, and attracted universal attention. The records were made in these on soft tinfoil sheets fastened around metal cylinders. For a while Mr Edison was compelled to suspend work on this invention, but soon returned to it and worked out the machine as it exists practically to-day. It occupies about the same space as a hand sewing-machine. A light tube of wax to slide on and off the cylinder is substituted for the tinfoil, which had been wrapped round it, and the indenting stylus is replaced by a minute engraving point. Under the varying pressure of the sound-waves, this point or knife cuts into the tube almost imperceptibly, the wax chiselled away wreathing off in very fine spirals before the edge of the little blade, as the cylinder travels under it. Each cylinder will receive about a thousand words. In the improved machine Mr Edison at first employed two diaphragms in 'spectacle' form, one to receive and the other to reproduce; but he has since combined these in a single efficient attachment.
1177 visits
