2-888-728 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Patent Impulsoria, 1850. 'This ingenious means of applying animal power to the working of railways, so as to supersede the costly locomotive engine, has lately been invented...The new machine, whose inventor is Signor Clemente Masserano from Pignerol, Piedmont, has been brought from Italy to England, and deposited at the Nine-elms terminus of the South-Western Railway [in London]...It consists in introducing the animals into a kind of coach, called Impulsoria, by which they transmit their acting power to the leading wheels....The horses are to be worked always at their usual pace, whilst the new locomotive will be able to run at any requisite speed, even at sixty miles an hour, without ever altering the usual walking pace of the horses, which are inside the Impulsoria, as on the floor of a room, sheltered from the weather'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.