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Post Info TOPIC: Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth
James H


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Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth
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The autobiography of the very interesting Mr. Edgeworth can be read here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=NKMDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=onepage&q=&f=false

On pages 164-5 he describes his idea for "a carriage which should carry a road for itself", and on page 145 a sort of man-powered wheels-within-wheels device.

The rest of it is a pretty fascinating insight into the life of a wealthy 18th century gentleman of a certain type.



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Rectalgia


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James H wrote:

The autobiography of the very interesting Mr. Edgeworth can be read here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=NKMDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=onepage&q=&f=false



A great find, thanks, I look forward to going through it at leisure. I see his (functional) "wheel ship" as well - "landships" indeed.

Maybe he was the first to conceive of/publish the idea of tracks then?

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Ironsides


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Hi James, these may interest....

http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/wiki/Richard_Lovell_Edgeworth

http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/wiki/James_Boydell

http://www.sandstone-estates.com/Inventory/steam_rollers/Burrell_Boydell.doc

http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/wiki/1862_London_Exhibition:_Catalogue:_Class_IX.:_Charles_Burrell

http://www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk/default.asp?Document=400.740.52x2&Image=175&gst=

I believe that this image is of a Boydell tractor using ideas from Edgeworth although as far I can see this is the first time this was used in a pratical sense sorry about the poor quality....

Cheerssmile

-- Edited by Ironsides on Friday 18th of December 2009 11:36:07 AM

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James H


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Thanks for responses, gents. The reason I posted it is that it's customary to include a passing mention of Edgeworth's patent in any account of the history of Tanks, military transport, etc., but I've never seen anything more substantial than the obligatory reference. From his description, it sounds a far cry from the caterpillar track as we know it, although I can't say I can picture it with any great precision. I think I shall have to keep reading it till it sinks in, so to speak.

The Burrell-Boydell with its "footed wheels" is the first illustration in Ellis & Bishop's Military Transport of WWI, included on the grounds that two examples were bought and tested by the War Department with a view to using them in The Crimea. Again, it's something of a leap from that to the caterpillar.

I am always greatly impressed by the gentlemen of this era who seemed to invent things all the time.

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Ironsides


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Hi James, I think it comes down to the concept of the original idea and the difference bettween that and a "modern" caterpillar track system...

Initially at least it seems a track was just that, an artificial pathway layed mechanical and physically fixed to the wheel but producing no "traction" with the ground, upon which the vehicles wheel would be able to travel.... the driving traction being created between the wheels and the "pathway", not the track and the ground...... hence an "endless track"....

Where as the Caterpillar track is a powered  pathway creating "traction" with the ground, for this to be possible it was necesary to seperate the "track" from the wheels....

Perhaps somewhere in bettween these two comes the "endless rail"....

If you get my meaning... or am I completely of the track biggrin

http://www.activeboard.com/forum.spark?aBID=63528&p=3&topicID=32239028

Cheerssmile


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Rectalgia


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James H wrote:

Thanks for responses, gents. The reason I posted it is that it's customary to include a passing mention of Edgeworth's patent in any account of the history of Tanks, military transport, etc., but I've never seen anything more substantial than the obligatory reference. From his description, it sounds a far cry from the caterpillar track as we know it, although I can't say I can picture it with any great precision. I think I shall have to keep reading it till it sinks in, so to speak.

The Burrell-Boydell with its "footed wheels" is the first illustration in Ellis & Bishop's Military Transport of WWI, included on the grounds that two examples were bought and tested by the War Department with a view to using them in The Crimea. Again, it's something of a leap from that to the caterpillar.


Thanks for the insight/clarification.
James H wrote:
I am always greatly impressed by the gentlemen of this era who seemed to invent things all the time.

Indeed - and they evidently encouraged each other. His closer acquaintances appear to have included Dr. Erasmus Darwin (the grandfather of Charles Darwin), Josiah Wedgwood (who was to become Charles' other grandfather) and Thomas Day (whose 'Sandford and Merton' served as a sort of Junior Woodchucks Guidebook with moral commentary for the many subsequent generations of boys right down to the end of the nineteenth century - I have my grandfather's copy).

Quite a coterie and that's only a fraction of it.

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Rectalgia


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Sadler and other precursors
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Of a later generation was the redoubtable Mr Sadler of Pimlico, "a very ingenious machinist, inventor of the celebrated war chariot, in which two persons, advancing or retreating, can manage two pieces of ordnance (three pounders) with alacrity and in safety, so as to do execution at the distance of two furlongs." Napoleon and the Invasion of England (second-last paragraph). The plate referred to in that reference can be seen in Loyal Volunteers of London and Environs - Sadlers Flying Artillery (plate 46?).

Perhaps the alacritous and safe pieces of ordnance are those described in Sporting Magazine - Volume 12 Page 167?  But the "war chariot" borrowed little from the much earlier armoured vehicles such as the cart that "goeth backwards" - A History of Firearms: From Earliest Times to 1914 Page 71.  In any event the next page page has a sketch of Mr Sadler's ubiquitous "flying artillery" wagon.

Most of those references come from Napoleon Series Archive forum.


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Ironsides


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Boydells endless Rail and Crimean War Traction Engine with Endless rail
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It really is unimaginable... but seems to have at least two wheels and a drum within, presumably the wheels are very big at least much bigger then six feet, perhaps there was some form of gearing involved bettween the inner drum and the outer wheels...

"The machinery which I intended to employ was a
huge hollow wheel, made very light, within side of
which, in a barrel of six feet diameter, a man should
walk, whilst he stepped thirty inches, the circum-
ference of the large wheel, or rather wheels, would
revolve five feet on the ground ; and as the machine
was to roll on planks, and on a plane somewhat
inclined, when once the vis inertia of the machine
should be overcome, it would carry on the man
within it as fast as he could possibly walk. I had
provided means of regulating the motion, so that the
wheel should not run away with its master. "

This Doesnt sound anything like a track too me more like a mechanical spider anyone seen "Wild Wild West"....

"I offered for a wager to produce a
wooden horse, that should carry me safely over the
highest wall in the country. It struck me, that, if
a machine were made with eight legs, four only of
which should stand upon the ground at one time ; if
the remaining four were raised up into the body of
the machine, and if this body were divided into two
parts, sliding, or rather rolling on cylinders, one of
the parts, and the legs belonging to it, might in two
efforts be projected over the wall by a person in the
machine ; and the legs belonging to this part might
be let down to the ground, and then the other half
of the machine might have its legs drawn up, and be
projected over the wall, and so on alternately. "

However....

Boydells endless Rail and Crimean War Traction Engine with Endless rail: see image from "Mechanical Traction in War" by LT-Col Otfried Layriz.

 

Cheerswink



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