William Murdoch

Based on Wikipedia: William Murdoch

In 1784, a small three-wheeled machine about a foot tall rolled across the floor of a living room in Redruth, Cornwall. It moved entirely on its own power, steam hissing from its tiny boiler, a spirit lamp flickering beneath. This was the first time in British history that anyone had witnessed a self-propelled vehicle in motion. The man who built it was not a wealthy inventor or a celebrated engineer. He was an employee—and he would remain one for the rest of his life.

William Murdoch's name has been largely forgotten, eclipsed by his employers Matthew Boulton and James Watt, whose partnership created the engines that powered the Industrial Revolution. Yet Murdoch invented gas lighting, the sun and planet gear, the pneumatic tube message system, and built the first working model of a steam locomotive in Britain. His story illuminates an uncomfortable truth about innovation: who gets credit often depends less on who had the idea than on who held the patent.

A Wooden Hat and a Three-Hundred-Mile Walk

Murdoch was born in 1754 at Bello Mill, near Old Cumnock in Ayrshire, Scotland. His father was a millwright—someone who designs, builds, and repairs mills—and a former artillery gunner for the Hanoverians. The elder Murdoch was also a tenant on the estate of James Boswell, the famous biographer of Samuel Johnson, a connection that would later prove significant.

Young William received a formal education until age ten, attending schools where he excelled in mathematics. But his real education came from working alongside his father. He learned to work metal and wood, to understand the principles of mechanics through direct experimentation. Around 1763, when he was about nine years old, he and his father built a "wooden horse on wheels"—essentially a tricycle propelled by hand cranks. He may have helped his father construct a bridge. And there are accounts of him conducting early experiments with coal gas, heating coal in a copper kettle inside a small cave near his father's mill.

In 1777, at twenty-three years old, Murdoch did something remarkable. He walked from Scotland to Birmingham—over three hundred miles—to ask James Watt for a job.

Watt and Murdoch likely already knew of each other through their mutual connection to James Boswell, who had visited Watt's workshop at Soho. But what clinched the job was not Murdoch's resume or his references. It was his hat.

Murdoch had made his hat out of wood, using a lathe of his own design. Matthew Boulton, Watt's business partner, was so impressed by this demonstration of craftsmanship and ingenuity that he hired Murdoch on the spot.

The Engine Erector

Murdoch began his career in the pattern workshop of the Soho Foundry, making patterns for casting machine parts. Within a year, Watt was writing that if Murdoch was not around, he should be "sent for immediately as he understands the patterns." He anglicized his name to "Murdock" when he settled in England, though today both spellings are used.

By 1779, Boulton was calling him "a valuable man" who deserved "every civility and encouragement." On his first solo job—erecting an engine at Wanlockhead Mine—Murdoch immediately began improving on the standard Boulton and Watt design, rearranging the gears to allow the steam valve to work automatically.

That September, he was sent to Redruth in Cornwall as a senior engine erector. This position put him at the heart of one of England's most important industries: tin mining.

The business model was unusual by modern standards. Boulton and Watt did not simply sell engines to customers. Instead, they operated and maintained the engines for groups of investors called "adventurers"—shareholders who funded mining operations. The engine manufacturers were paid not a flat fee but through a complex formula based on the engine's performance. As Watt explained: "Our profits arise not from making the engine, but from a certain proportion of the savings in fuel which we make over any common engine, that raises the same quantity of water to the same height."

This meant that Murdoch's skill in optimizing his engines directly affected Boulton and Watt's bottom line. He delivered. By 1782, Boulton was writing: "We want more Murdocks, for of all others he is the most active man and best engine erector I ever saw... When I look at the work done it astonishes me & is entirely owing to the spirit and activity of Murdoch who hath not gone to bed 3 of the nights."

The Sun and the Planet

Cornwall in the 1780s was a hotbed of industrial espionage. Multiple engine erectors competed with one another, each using different technical methods to achieve similar results. Copying innovations and violating patents was common, often through casual conversations between engineers or practical observations of modified engines.

Murdoch found himself on both sides of this espionage. Watt, who was particularly anxious about patent infringement, called upon Murdoch to make reports and swear out affidavits for legal actions against competitors. This could be dangerous. As one colleague warned Watt: "If he makes an Affidavit against Carpenter or Penandrea, there will be no safety for him in Redruth." Cornwall was close-knit and clannish, and informers were not welcome.

At the same time, Murdoch was required to inspect competitors' engines, both to check for patent infringement and to assess their effectiveness. He was, in essence, a spy for his employers as well as their chief mechanic in the region.

Working constantly with steam engines and their many problems, Murdoch naturally began devising improvements. From 1782, there is evidence he was discussing and collaborating with Watt on various inventions. But here is where the historical record becomes murky—and suspicious.

There is a notable absence of letters from Murdoch to Watt in the Watt archive from 1780 to 1797. Historian John Griffiths has argued that Watt's son, James Watt Junior, may have removed these letters to protect his father's reputation by eliminating evidence of where certain patented inventions actually originated.

One thing is almost certain: Murdoch's employment contract specified that anything he invented would become the intellectual property of his employers. Boulton and Watt filed the patents and reaped the benefits.

The most significant invention attributed to Murdoch is the sun and planet gear. This mechanism solved a critical problem: how to convert the vertical up-and-down motion of a steam engine's beam into rotary motion that could turn wheels and drive machinery.

The solution was elegant. A cogwheel called the "planet" was fixed to the end of a rod connected to the engine beam. As the beam moved up and down, the planet wheel revolved around a second cogwheel called the "sun," which was fixed to a drive shaft. The sun's rotation turned the shaft, converting linear motion into circular motion.

Why not simply use a crank? Because a competitor named James Pickard held the patent on cranks. The sun and planet gear was a workaround—an ingenious way to achieve the same result without infringing on Pickard's intellectual property.

James Watt patented the sun and planet gear in his own name in October 1781. However, Samuel Smiles, the biographer of Boulton and Watt, attributes the invention to Murdoch. A drawing of the sun and planet system in Murdoch's handwriting, dated August 1781—two months before Watt's patent—still exists. And there is a letter from Boulton to a colleague mentioning Watt's upcoming patents, in which Boulton writes: "He has another rotative scheme to add, which I could have told him of long ago when first invented by William Murdock but I do not think it a matter of much consequence."

Not a matter of much consequence. Boulton was wrong about that. The sun and planet gear was essential to making steam power useful for factory machinery, transportation, and countless other applications. It was, in a sense, one of the key mechanisms that made the Industrial Revolution possible.

Light from Coal

Gas lighting is attributed to Murdoch in the early 1790s. He is also credited with coining the term "gasometer"—the large storage tanks used to hold coal gas before distribution.

However, the history of gas lighting, like so many technologies, has multiple origin points. A Dutch-Belgian academic named Jean-Pierre Minckelers had already published work on coal gasification and gas lighting in 1784 and had used gas to illuminate his auditorium at the University of Leuven starting in 1785. Archibald Cochrane, the ninth Earl of Dundonald, had used gas to light his family estate from 1789 onward.

What Murdoch contributed was the development of gas lighting into a practical, scalable system. His early experiments with coal gas—reportedly conducted in a cave near his father's mill when he was still young—had given him years of hands-on experience with the technology. By the 1790s, he was producing and using gas on a larger scale, illuminating his own home and eventually demonstrating the technology at the Soho Foundry.

Gas lighting would transform cities over the following decades. Before gas, urban nights were dark except for candles, oil lamps, and the occasional torch. After gas, streets could be illuminated safely and relatively cheaply. Factories could operate at night. Crime could be deterred. Social life could extend past sunset. The modern concept of nightlife owes something to William Murdoch's experiments with coal in a kettle.

The Steam Carriage That Almost Was

In 1784, Murdoch built a working model of a steam-powered carriage. Witnesses saw it "run around Murdoch's living room in Redruth." This was the first recorded example in Great Britain of a machine moving completely under its own power.

The model was about a foot tall, with three wheels. The engine and boiler sat between the two larger back wheels, with a spirit lamp underneath to heat the water. A tiller at the front controlled the smaller steering wheel. Murdoch incorporated several innovations into this model, including a boiler safety valve, a cylinder partly immersed in the boiler, and an early version of what would become known as the D-slide valve.

He was not the first to build a steam vehicle. The French engineer Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot had demonstrated full-sized working steam vehicles from 1769 onward, including one designed to carry four to five tonnes. But Cugnot's machines were unwieldy and impractical. What was needed was a more effective design.

Murdoch believed he had one.

In March 1784, his colleague Thomas Wilson wrote to Watt about Murdoch's "new scheme": "It is no less than drawing carriages upon the road with steam engines... he says that what he proposes, is different from anything you ever thought of, and that he is positively certain of its answering and that there is a great deal of money to be made by it."

Watt's reply made clear that he saw no future in the idea. But his reasons were not purely technical. He was afraid of losing Murdoch's services in Cornwall. He tried to dissuade Murdoch from the scheme.

A later letter from Boulton revealed more details about Murdoch's plans. Murdoch proposed capturing condensed steam by directing it against broad copper plates, then collecting the water to return to the boiler. He envisioned using different-sized gears for hills and valleys, adapting the engine's output to the terrain. Boulton noted: "I verely believe he would sooner give up all his cornish business & interest than be deprived of carrying the thing into execution."

In that same letter, Boulton secretly urged Watt to include a steam carriage in his upcoming patent application—not to develop the technology, but to prevent Murdoch from doing so. Watt complied, later writing: "I have given such descriptions of engines for wheel carriages as I could do in the time and space I could allow myself; but it is very defective and can only serve to keep other people from similar patents."

Murdoch continued working on his steam carriage despite his employers' opposition. By August 1786, he had built at least one additional model. He got married in 1785 and his wife gave birth to twins that same year, which slowed his progress. But shortly after the twins were born, with his second model completed, Murdoch set off for London to patent his steam locomotive.

He never made it.

At Exeter, on the road to London, Murdoch was met by Matthew Boulton himself. Boulton persuaded him to return to Cornwall without registering the patent. As Boulton wrote to Watt on September 2, 1795: "He said He was going to London to get Men but I soon found he was going there with his Steam Carg to shew it & to take out a patent."

Boulton persuaded Murdoch to turn back. But before returning to Cornwall, Murdoch gave a demonstration. In the Rivers Great Room at the King's Head hotel in Truro, he made his steam carriage travel "a Mile or two... in a Circle making it carry the fire Shovel, poker & tongs."

This was the first public demonstration in Britain of steam locomotion in action. It happened in a hotel room, organized by an employee who had been intercepted on his way to register a patent and talked into coming home.

The Credit Belongs to Others

After 1786, the correspondence between Murdoch, Watt, and Boulton makes no further mention of steam carriages. But evidence exists that Murdoch continued working on the idea without his employers' support. Some historians argue that he eventually built a full-sized version.

Whether he did or not, Richard Trevithick would go on to build the first practical steam locomotive in 1804. George Stephenson would develop the technology further, leading to the railway age. The steam locomotive would transform transportation, knit nations together, enable the settlement of continents. And Murdoch's name would fade from the story.

This was the pattern of his life. He invented the sun and planet gear; Watt patented it. He pioneered gas lighting; others commercialized it on a grand scale. He built Britain's first self-propelled vehicle; others took steam locomotion from a living room demonstration to a world-changing technology.

Murdoch remained an employee, and later a partner, of Boulton and Watt until the 1830s. He eventually gained the right to patent inventions in his own name—in 1799 he patented an improved steam wheel, a precursor to the steam turbine. He invented a pneumatic message system that used compressed air to propel cylinders through tubes, a technology that would be developed commercially and used by department stores like Harrods well into the twentieth century. He built a steam cannon in 1803 and attempted to use it to knock down a wall at the Soho Foundry. He invented machinery to compress peat moss into a material with "the appearance of the finest Jet."

He was inventive to the end. But his reputation was always overshadowed by the men whose names appeared on the patents.

What We Remember and What We Forget

The Industrial Revolution is remembered through a handful of famous names: James Watt, Matthew Boulton, George Stephenson, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. These were important figures who made genuine contributions. But they were also figures who had the capital, the connections, and the legal standing to claim ownership of innovations.

William Murdoch walked three hundred miles to ask for a job. He worked for decades in Cornwall, optimizing engines, improving designs, and making his employers rich. He invented mechanisms that were fundamental to steam power and technologies that would transform daily life. And he did so as an employee, under contracts that assigned his intellectual property to others.

His story is not unique. The history of technology is full of people whose contributions were absorbed into the work of their employers, credited to their superiors, or simply forgotten. Patents were expensive to obtain and defend. Credit flowed upward to those with resources and social standing. The person who had the idea and the person who owned the idea were often not the same.

Today, Murdoch's steam carriage model sits in Thinktank, the Birmingham Science Museum. It is about a foot tall, with three wheels and a small boiler. It is the oldest surviving artifact of British automotive history, predating the railway age by decades.

It ran around a living room in Redruth in 1784. It demonstrated steam locomotion in a hotel room in Truro in 1786. And then its inventor went back to work for his employers, who had persuaded him not to patent it.

The fire shovel, poker, and tongs that it carried in that hotel demonstration—perhaps the most British cargo imaginable for a pioneering vehicle—are lost to history. So, largely, is the name of the man who made them move.