Richard Trevithick

Richard Trevithick was a British mining engineer from Cornwall who pioneered the high-pressure steam engine and built the world's first working railway steam locomotive. Trained in Cornwall's tin and copper mining industry, he developed high-pressure steam engines that dispensed with the bulky condensers required by earlier low-pressure designs, work his son later dated to 1799. On February 21, 1804, his unnamed locomotive hauled ten tons of iron, five wagons and seventy men across 9.75 miles of tramway at the Penydarren ironworks in Wales in just over four hours, the first locomotive-hauled railway journey in history. He also built early steam road carriages, including the Puffing Devil in 1801, and worked on projects ranging from a Thames tunnel attempt to marine engines, but he struggled financially throughout his career and died in poverty in Dartford, Kent, in 1833, despite the transformative significance of his engineering innovations.