A Treatise upon Wheel-Carriages; Shewing their present Defects: with a Plan and Description of a New Constructed Waggon
Published by S. Crowder, London, 1763
- Hardcover
- Used
Seller: Editio Altera, Bronxville, NY, U.S.A.Editio Altera
AbeBooks seller since April 26, 2022
Condition: Used
£ 971.16
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
THE NEED FOR SPEED. "HAD A BOYLE OR A NEWTON, WITH THEIR ABILITIES BEEN DOOMED TO FOLLOW A WAGGON FOR SEVEN YEARS, WHAT LIGHTS WOULD THEY HAVE THROWN UPON THE SUBJECT?". [Price 1s, 6d]. Large 8vo [22.5 x 14 cm]. vi pp, (2), 54 pp, [terminal blank], plus large folding engr. plate. Bound in neat modern claret buckram with gilt title on cover. Edges deckled but cut; frontispiece rather toned, but otherwise a nice copy, clean and fresh. Sole edition of this proposal to remedy Britain’s broken transportation network with a rather radical new vehicle. Under the strain of ever-increasing carriage traffic as the population become more mobile, public roads in the 18th century had become little more than collections of deeply-grooved rivets, often filled with mud, thanks to the incessant passage of standard, rather narrow carriage-wheels (cf Pratt, "The Age of Bad Roads"). As Bourn relates here in lively language, this state of affairs has rendered travel by carriage extremely unpleasant, and above all slower – as the jolting departure from one rivet to the another becomes too dangerous and excruciating at higher speeds. Bourn’s solution is straightforward: each wheel should be precisely 1 ft 4 inches wide, and made of cast iron formed around a wooden axle. In this way, these futuristic vehicles will not only ensure a smoother, speedier ride, but they will actually improve the topography of the road as they pass over it by smoothing it out. Furthermore, Bourn’s cast iron ‘rollers’ avoid the deadly pitfalls of broken spokes and splintering wheels. Although his proposed solution seems at first glance absurd, it seems to be the case that carriages with slightly wider wheels were subsequently encouraged on toll-roads across Britain, incentivized with lower tolls. The rest of the treatise discusses the toll-road system in general (of course, under the proposed scheme, narrow-wheeled vehicles which actually damage the roads should pay more towards their upkeep), followed by "A few Remarks on the Highways". The problem of maintaining public roads was a serious issue in the 18th century, with an elaborate bureaucracy of local officials dedicated to the problem, and it is interesting to note that Benjamin Franklin owned a copy of Bourn’s proposal (Wolf & Hayes #*394). No copy of the present work has appeared at auction since 1999 (Christie’s); but the ESTC shows 6 UK copies as well as US copies at Cal State, Harvard, Huntington, Winterthur, Newberry, Yale, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. * ESTC T111895; Webb, Bibliography of Road-making and Roads in the United Kingdom, p. 223; Pratt, "The Age of Bad Roads", pp. 64-76 in A History of Inland Transport (1912).…
Seller Inventory # D0299
Bibliographic details
- Title
- A Treatise upon Wheel-Carriages; Shewing their present Defects: with a Plan and Description of a New Constructed Waggon
- Author
- BOURN, Daniel
- Publisher
- S. Crowder, London
- Publication year
- 1763
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Seller catalogs
- Books in English, Illustrated, Science & Medicine
Editio Altera
Bronxville, NY, U.S.A.
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Inlibris LLC
245 8th Avenue, #166
New York, NY U.S.A. 10011
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