JF Ptak Science Books: A Giant Metal Kraken Worm, Beast Among Beasts: a Tunneling Machine, 1862

JF Ptak Science Books Post 2790

This enormous piece of machinery was designed and patented by Hubert Newton Penrice (of Norwich¹) in 1862 for "tunneling and driving through rock and other strata". The section labeled "F" is obviously the grinding business-end of the beast, meant to turn with a "variable" speed--what we see here is the outermost set of teeth which surrounded an unspecified number of smaller concentric cutting plates. I imagine that if you looked at this machine straight-on from the front you'd see a number of concentric rings of hundreds of steel teeth, which immediately makes me think "Kraken!", though this one is underground, boring its way through rock. No specifics are given for dimensions, though my guess would be that the cutting face had to be at least 8' (?), meaning that the entire machine was on the order of about 50'.

Originally the steam-driven machine was powered "at a distance" though in this version the boiler and engine are right there behind the cutting face and a car powered to inch froward as the tunneling is done. The boiler would supply several engines--one to drive the cutting wheels, another to feed the machine that "swept" up the cut stone and directed them towards the back of the outfit another to power the forward motion of the whole thing to put pressure on the cutting face, and I think several more. That long shaft along the top of the unit is for "waste steam" that would direct (some!) of the smoke and heat towards the rear and eventually out of the tunnel, somehow.

I don't know how many workers it took to operate this thing and make it all work, and I find it difficult to imagine working in a cramped, hot, loud, dangerous and uncertain situation as this, and have it all underground and powered by steam.

The only thing worse that I can think of--outside of pure disaster--is failure: what happened if the thing got "stuck"?

“On each axle is a screw or worm wheel and there are two parallel shafts one on each side of the boiler with worms or screws thereon there being one worm for each of the wheels by this means a slow motion may be given to the wheels and the machinery may thus be moved towards the face of the work. The speed at which the screw shafts are driven is capable of being readily varied in order to suit the varying strata and in order to be able readily to adjust the progress of the machine to the quantity of work which the cutters are enabled ...”--from the article.