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.