CERTAIN IMPROVEMENTS ON AND ADDITIONS TO WHEELED CARRIAGES
Year: 1821

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, J, JOHN'
RICHARD BARRY, of the Minories, in the City of London, Gentleman, send
greeting.
WHEREAS His most Excellent Majesty King George the Fourth did, by
His Letters Patent under the Great Seal of that part of the United King-
dom of Great Britain and Ireland called England, bearing date at West-
minster, the Twenty-sixth day of July, in the second year of His reign, give
and grant unto me, the said John Richard Barry, my exors, adñors, and
assigns, His especial licence, full power, sole privilege and authority, that I,
the said John Richard Barry, my exors, admors, and assigns, during the term
of years therein mentioned, should and lawfully might make, use, or exercise
and vend, within England, Wales, or Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and also in
all His Majesty's Colonies and Plantations abroad, my Invention of "CERTAIN
IMPROVEMENTS ON AND ADDITIONS TO WHEELED CARRIAGES;" in which said Letters'
Patent there is contained a proviso that if I, the said John Richard Barry,
shall not particularly describe and ascertain the nature of my said Inven-
tion, and in what manner the same is to be performed, by an instrument
in writing under my hand and seal, and cause the same to be inrolled in His
Majesty's High Court of Chancery within six calendar months next and
immediately after the date of the said Letters Patent, that then the said
Letters Patent, and all liberties and advantages whatsoever thereby granted,
shall utterly cease, determine, and become void, as in and by the same,
relation being thereunto had, will more fully and at large appear.

page_text: NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso, I, the said
John Richard Barry, do hereby declare that the nature of my said Inven-
tion, and the manner in which the same is to be performed, is explained in
and by the Drawings hereunto annexed, and the following description thereof
(that is to say):—
"My Improvements on and Additions to Wheeled Carriages" consists in
the introduction of moveable wheels, axles, and antefriction rollers, and of an
endless railway, round which they revolve, by which the advantages of rolling
'upon a smooth, hard, and firmly resisting surface are obtained, when the
carriage is upon soft, rugged, or uneven ground, and the simultaneous revo-
lution of wheels and axles produces, upon a hard and smooth road, a
movement similar to that of a weight on rollers, annihilates friction between
the boxes of the wheels and their axles, and is rendered perpetual by their
connexion on the endless railway. The mode by which I embody these
principles, and which constitutes my improvements, will be seen by reading
the following description, and referring to the annexed Drawings.
Fig. 1 represents a section of the carriage with my improvements. Fig. 2,
a plan or horizontal view of the same; and the respective letters refer to
the same parts in both Drafts. a, a, are two rails of wood or other suitable.
material, which should be coated on the upper and under surface with thin
plate iron or other metal.. These two rails stand parallel to each other, and
in the same horizontal plane, being firmly connected together. They are
represented in the Drafts connected by two transverse bars or beams b, b; from
the external ends of these beams, or from the sides of the rails, arms or
brackets c, c, extend in a bent form, for the purpose of avoiding the wheels,
and upon these arms or brackets the body of the vehicle is supported, as seen
in Fig. 1. If, however, it should be thought useful to dispense with the
axles which are continued across the vehicle, the body of the carriages may be
supported upon the transverse bars or beams which connect the two rails.
d, d, are two pairs of reels (mounted upon axles) round which the endless
chains e, e, e, e, are passed, and studs or teeth are set in the peripheries of
these reels adapted to receive and confine the action of the chains. f. f, f
are antefriction rollers, the axles of which are attached to the chains (by
means of plummer blocks or other contrivances) at equal distances apart.
These rollers run upon the surface of the endless rails a, a, and upon the
outer ends of their axles the wheels g, g, g, are placed, which bear upon the
road. These parts having been separately described, the operation and
advantages of their combination are as follows:-The draught of the horse
being (by means of traces or otherwise) connected to the rails a, a, or to the

page_text: body of the vehicle, the whole moves forward. When the carriage is drawn
on the surface of a hard and smooth road, the wheels do not (as in ordinary
carriages) turn upon their axles; for as the weight of the carriage rests upon the
top of the antefriction rollers, which are upon the same axles as the wheels that
press the road, the wheels become rollers, advance with less velocity than the
carriage, but are relieved by others perpetually and successively supplied
from the endless railway. Each wheel is drawn successively under the rail,
and the descending wheel counterbalances that which is rising. Thus upon
a smooth surface, axle friction is totally annihilated; but because a road
will seldom be found hard, smooth, and unobstructed, the most important
feature of the Invention remains to be noticed, and will introduce the
operation of the antifriction rollers, which are only called into action when
the resistance arising from obstructions before the peripheries of the wheels
would exceed that which axle friction opposes to the draught. Soft, muddy,
or yielding roads may be considered to present an accumulation or succession
of obstructions perpetually operating to impede the progress of the wheels.
Under these circumstances, or when travelling upon a road which is rugged,
or the track of which is intercepted by obstacles, the wheels of my improved
carriage, instead of passing over the obstructions, remain at rest; the carriage
nevertheless advances upon the antifriction rollers until the rail has passed-
beyond the obstructions, when the wheels rise unimpeded, pursue their course
round the endless railway, and in the order of succession are again upon the
road before the rails. Thus on a very bad road the only impediments to
draught are the antifriction rollers, turning upon the smooth surface of the.
endless rail and their friction of axle. The mechanical. agency of hills
necessarily operates, but the carriage has the advantage, in ascending hills,
of being unimpeded by the resistances obviated by my improvements.
Having thus described the principles of my Invention, it may be necessary:
to state that I do not confine myself to the precise number of wheels and
axles shewn in the Drawings, neither do I consider it necessary for the
effective operation of the carriage that axles should be continued across to
connect the opposite wheels; for I can connect the axles to the carriage, by
means of sliding or jointed rods or arms, extending from the sides of the
carriage, and by some other modifications which produce a similar movement to
that which I have described and shewn by the Drawings. It will also be seen
that in the Drawings I have not provided a mode by which the carriage would
be enabled to describe curves or turn corners and angles in the road. This
appeared to me altogether unnecessary to shew, as my Invention and claim
do not consist in any exclusive new method of turning carriages. But that

page_text: I may not. be thought to. withhold any useful information, I will further
state, that in order to enable a carriage with my improvements to turn. angles
or corners with ease, I would recommend and should- employ two sets of
the apparatus (two distinct carriages), each having only half the number of
wheels, &c. shewn in the Drawing. The rails of the hinder carriage-firmly
fixed by its framework to the body of the vehicle, and the rails of the front.
carriage connected to the vehicle by means of a centre and sliding plates (as.
in ordinary carriages), so as to enable the. fore wheels to be turned in any.
direction obliquely to the hinder wheels. With a double carriage more than,
three pair of the wheels, &c. to each will seldom be necessary. It may be.
proper to observe, that as the wheels of my improved carriage, do not roll:
over, obstacles, it will be useless and improper to make them of large.
dimensions.
In' witness whereof, I, the said John Richard Barry, have hereunto set*
my hand and seal, this. Twenty-sixth day of January, in the year of our
Lord One thousand eight hundred and twenty-two