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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index T > Richard Trevithick Quotes

Thumbnail of Richard Trevithick (source)
Richard Trevithick
(13 Apr 1771 - 22 Apr 1833)

English mechanical engineer and inventor who successfully harnessed high-pressure steam and constructed the world's first steam railway locomotive (1803).


Science Quotes by Richard Trevithick (1 quote)

Richard Trevithick, head facing right, detail cropped from a portrait.
Richard Trevithick. From portrait by John Linnell (1816). (source)
I have been branded with folly and madness for attempting what the world calls impossibilities, and even from the great engineer, the late James Watt, who said ... that I deserved hanging for bringing into use the high-pressure engine. This has so far been my reward from the public; but should this be all, I shall be satisfied by the great secret pleasure and laudable pride that I feel in my own breast from having been the instrument of bringing forward new principles and new arrangements of boundless value to my country, and however much I may be straitened in pecuniary circumstances, the great honour of being a useful subject can never be taken from me, which far exceeds riches.
— Richard Trevithick
From letter to Davies Gilbert, written a few months before Trevithick's last illness. Quoted in Francis Trevithick, Life of Richard Trevithick: With an Account of his Inventions (1872), Vol. 2, 395-6.
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