Automobile Biographies

Edmund Cartwright

Noted investogator of propelling land-carriages by steam.

Born at Marnham, Nottinghamshire, England, April 24, 1743.
Died at Hastings, October 30, 1823.

Cartwright was educated at Oxford and secured a living in the English church. He devoted himself to the ministry and to literature until 1784, when he became interested in machinery and in the following year invented the power loom. He took out other patents and also gave some attention to devising a mechanical carriage propelled by man power. In 1822, he made a vehicle that was moved by a pair of treadles and cranks worked by the driver.

Even the steam engine engaged his attention. Some improvements which he proposed in it are recorded in works on mechanics. While residing at Eltham, in Lincolnshire, he used frequently to tell his son that, if he lived to be a man, he would see both ships and land-carriages impelled by steam. At that early period he constructed a model of a steam engine attached to a barge, which he explained, about the year 1793, to Robert Fulton. It appears that even in his old age, only a year before his death, he was actively engaged in endeavoring to contrive a plan of propelling land-carriages by steam.