A Cornish Puffer Whim

after Trevithick, Cornwall, 1805

Trevithick’s answer to the mine that could not afford an engine-house: a strong-steam engine and its cylindrical boiler in one iron package, winding ore up the shaft and puffing its exhaust at the sky. Dozens were built and carted about the county; the name is the sound. No condenser, no beam, no ceremony — the shape of every portable engine to come.

A typical whim wound at whatever the kibble asked, on fifty pounds of steam, from a cylinder nearer a bucket than a hall.

On our bed: some twenty horses from a barrel-sized cylinder, at thirty-five millions of duty — parity with the great Watt engines, from a fraction of the iron.

One of the cabinet’s specimens, each ready for the test bed.