All About Inventions and Discoveries
The Romance of modern scientific and mechanical Achievements

was prompted to test his creation upon roads, but the authorities were soon hot track. One day, while joy-riding at the (?) speed of io miles an hour, his engine Motor-Propelled Vehicles 307 furniture. Subsequently he submitted it to a high- road test, late at night, upon the roads of his native town of Redruth, only to throw the good vicar, who was taking the air in the darkness, into abject fear. Seeing the engine coming along the road belching sparks, smoke, and flame, and terrified by the chug- chugging of the monster, the worthy man turned and fled in mad haste, firmly believing, as Smiles relates, that the Evil One was after him in propria persona. There is no doubt but that Murdock, flushed by his success on the high road, would have attempted further experiments upon a larger scale had it not been for the dissuasion of Watt, who feared that the new channel of thought would interfere with Mur- dock’s work at the Cornish mines. At all events, Murdock seems to have abandoned the idea which he was contemplating, and his name does not appear to be linked with further development. But seventeen years later a contemporary engineer, Richard Trevithick, brought out his proposal for a road engine. In general appearance it was not dis- similar from the steam-railway locomotive which appeared a little later. The engine, however, possessed one notable feature, and this was a system of gear transmission to the driving wheels. Trevithick, like Murdock, the high upon his terrifying ran somewhat amok and crashed into a fence ! It was the latter and not the engine which suffered, several palings being stripped off. For this heinous offence Trevithick was sternly warned off the high-