Engineers and Mechanics Encyclopedia 1839: Railways: Richard Trevithick

The last invention of the celebrated Richard Trevithick, of Camborne, in Cornwall, for which he took a patent on the 19th March, 1833, was for improvements in the steam-engine, and in their application to navigation and locomotion.

The first of these improvements consisted in interposing between the boiler and the working cylinder, in a situation to be strongly heated, a long pipe, formed of a compact series of curved pipes, in which the steam, after it has left the boiler, passes with great velocity, and is further expanded volume before it enters the cylinder. And in order still further to augment this volume of steam, he placed the working cylinder within a case constituting a part of the chimney, where the cylinder was kept hotter than the steam employed in it, and by these means employed the otherwise waste heat in augmenting the power of the engine.

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