Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.16190

    Spoiled carriage design

    Date
    ca.1665
    Creator
    Thomas Blount (1599 - 1678) , Landowner
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p152v
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (Page): 301mm
    width (Page): 385mm
    Subject
    Content object
    Description
    Side elevation of a design for a four-wheeled coupé-style carriage. This version is incomplete and struck through. Several pinholes indicate that the basic proportions of the work were used as a template for the completed drawing, which appears on the reverse. This should be regarded as a preparatory work and is also, therefore, a mirror image of the final illustration. From the papers of Robert Boyle.
    Transcription
    Headed: ‘This will not doe because its [illegible] the old way [illegible] bord’.
    The standard bearing the carrg. must stand on the bord and not on the [illegible].’
    Transcribed by the Making Visible project
    Object history
    Thomas Blount discussed carriage designs at meetings of the Royal Society during the period 1664-65. On 8 March 1665, ‘Col. Blount proposed the improvement of the French chariot, by taking off the burthen from the horse, by means of two small wheels before, retaining the long springy boards’ (Birch 2:22).

    By 29 March 1665, ‘Col. Blount brought in two models of chariots, one with two, the other with four wheels, of which he had tried the easiness of moving them by bullets upon different grounds; the particulars of which he gave in writing. His paper was ordered to be kept, and the operator was directed to make some models of chariots for trials with them' (Birch 2:27).

    Several Fellows of the Royal Society, notably Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, left accounts of participating in Blount’s carriage demonstrations. Blount’s papers on a chariot trial (1665) and on the numbers of wheels for carriages (1667) are preserved as Royal Society Classified Papers: Cl.P/3i/020-21.
    Related fellows
    Thomas Blount (1599 - 1678) , Landowner
    Robert Boyle (1627 - 1691, British) , Natural philosopher
    Associated place
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          > United Kingdom
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