Andrew Vivian
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Andrew Vivian (1759-1842) was a Cornish mechanical engineer, inventor, and mine captain of the famous Dolcoath Silver Mine in Cornwall. The family of Vivian is a very old one in Cornwall.
In partnership with his cousin, the mine engineer Richard Trevithick (1771-1833), Andrew Vivian gave a great contribution to today's railway transportation system, inventing the steam locomotive and substituting at the beginning of the 19th century the animal power with the machine power. They produced the first steam carriage or locomotive in 1801, patenting high pressure engines for stationary and locomotive use in March of the following year.
[edit] Timeline
The first steam-carriage was in progress in 1800, and on Christmas Eve, 1801, conveyed the first load of passengers ever moved by force of steam.
In 1801 Richard Trevithick completed his first full sized road locomotive in Camborne. He demonstrated it to the public on Christmas Eve with his cousin Andrew Vivian at the controls. The first day it ran about the streets and up the very steep Beacon Hill. The engine was called "Captain Dick's Puffer," from the steam and smoke puffing out of the chimney at each stroke of the engine. The next day it went down to Crane, a short mile, so that Captain Andrew Vivian's family, who lived there, might see it.
In 1801 Holyhead was chosen as a packet station, and 15 years later made the terminus of the Great Telford Road.
In 1802 Vivian, Trevithick and West obtained the patent for the creation of a minerary steam locomotive. They patented the high-pressure engine which they intended to adapt to any purpose where power from coal was cheaper than from men and horses. This was principally for their application of the engine to the purpose of the driving of carriages upon railroads.
In the following years, George Stephenson, English railway engineer, perfected the steam locomotive in terms of public transportation.
A second locomotive was tried in Camborne and, at the beginning of 1803, in London. In August 1803, Mr. Felton, of Leather Lane, London, was paid for building the coach. The boiler was wholly of wrought iron, and, with the engine attached to it, was put together in Felton's carriage shop. Trevithick, William West and Andrew Vivian were with it. William West was the principal man in putting the engine together.
Later that same year Richard Trevithick built an improved steam carriage, which was shipped to London in the Little Catherine (1801), a temporary packet commanded by John Vivian (1784-1871), nephew of Andrew Vivian, Trevithick's business partner.
In 1806 Andrew Vivian improved the rail profile and created the iron wheels with the external rim edges that radically changed the railway system up to these days.
In 1825 a steam locomotive made by Stephenson (1781-1848) would carry a train from Stockton to Darlington.
