John Braithwaite

John Braithwaite (1797–1870) was a British civil and mechanical engineer who, together with the Swedish engineer John Ericsson, designed and built Novelty for the Rainhill Trials of October 1829 — the locomotive that attracted the most public enthusiasm at the trials, reaching an estimated 28 mph and demonstrating a level of speed and lightness that astonished spectators, before suffering repeated boiler failures that prevented its completion of the course.

Born at New Road, London on 19 March 1797, Braithwaite came from a family of engineers — his father ran a steam engineering works in St Pancras — and he took over the family business before entering partnership with Ericsson. The two men designed and built Novelty in just six weeks before the Rainhill Trials, a remarkable achievement that reflected both their engineering skill and their underestimation of how much development the design needed for sustained operation. Novelty was the lightest and most elegantly proportioned of the Rainhill contestants, a vertical-boilered design quite unlike the Stephenson approach, and its speed on the opening day of the trials made it the popular favourite before its mechanical problems became apparent.

Braithwaite subsequently worked as a civil engineer, laying out the Eastern Counties Railway — the predecessor of the Great Eastern — to a broad gauge of 5 ft before the line was subsequently converted to standard gauge. He also pioneered the use of compressed air for industrial pumping applications and is credited with building the first practical steam fire engine in 1829, a contribution to fire-fighting technology as significant as his railway work. He died at New Cross, London on 25 September 1870.