2-982-316 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Bray's Traction-engine, 1858. '...thousands of spectators...seemed much interested and astonished on seeing a steam-engine traversing the streets of London...Attached was a truck, or platform, on wheels, loaded with heavy packages of several tons weight, and thus proceeded from the manufactory of Maudslay and Field along the Westminster-road to their wharf close to Westminster-bridge...The engine is the invention of a gentleman named Bray, who has obtained a patent. It is adapted to travel up hill or down, and its speed may he increased at pleasure...Those immense masses of ironwork produced in the workshops of Maudslay and Field...machinery weighing many tons, when required to be removed, being placed on trucks, had to be drawn by...[up to] sixteen horses...[Here is a] motive force, occupying no more room than a van or a common omnibus, performing the same work with an economy of space most desirable in crowded thoroughfares, and doubtless with a great saving...this invention may be used for carrying passengers in our streets, for drawing heavily-laden carts or waggons on the highway or dragging ploughs in the fields, and for performing other necessary and important services which no animal force could sustain or accomplish'. From "Illustrated London News", 1858.