Trevithick, Richard (trĕv`ĭthĭk), 1771–1833, British engineer and inventor, b. Cornwall. He is known as the father of locomotive power because of his invention (1800) of the high-pressure steam engine. He built a steam carriage that on Christmas Eve, 1801, in London, carried the first passengers transported by steam power. In 1804 a steam locomotive he constructed was used in Wales on a railway, the first vehicle to be so operated. Trevithick also developed steam engines for use in mines and invented a steam threshing machine.

Trevithick, Richard

Richard Trevithick, detail of an oil painting by John Linnell, 1816; in the Science Museum, London.

(credit: Courtesy of the Science Museum, London, the Woodcroft Bequest)

(born April 13, 1771, Illogan, Cornwall, Eng.—died April 22, 1833, Dartford, Kent) British inventor of the first steam locomotive. With little formal education, in 1790 he became an engineer for several ore mines in Cornwall. In 1797 his experiments with high-pressure steam led him to develop a small, light engine to replace the large, low-pressure mine engines then used for hoisting ore. In 1801 he built the first steam carriage, which he later drove in London. In 1803 he built the first steam railway locomotive for an ironworks in Wales. He abandoned his locomotive projects in 1808 because the iron rails were too fragile to carry their weight. He adapted his engine to produce the first steam dredger in 1806. In 1816 he traveled to South America to deliver engines to Peruvian silver mines, hoping to become wealthy, but returned to England in 1827 penniless.