The village was the terminus of the world's first steam railway journey when on 21 February 1804 the inventor Richard Trevithick drove a steam locomotive hauling both iron and passengers travelled from the Penydarren ironworks in Merthyr Tydfil to the basin of the Glamorganshire Canal at Abercynon.
The exhaust from the cylinders on the first steam locomotive – built by Richard Trevithick – was directed up the chimney, and he noted its effect on increasing the draft through the fire at the time.
The device was invented in 1803 by Richard Trevithick, the proponent of high-pressure (as opposed to atmospheric) steam engines, in consequence of an explosion in one of his new boilers.
In 2005, he beat Owen Money, Richard Trevithick, Joseph Parry and Lady Charlotte Guest to be named "Greatest Citizen of Merthyr Tydfil", in a public vote competition run by Cyfarthfa Castle and Museum as part of the centenary celebrations to mark Merthyr’s incorporation as a county borough in 1905
After this he set up an engineering business but little is known about it except that he built at least one steam carriage (probably similar to those built by Richard Trevithick and Goldsworthy Gurney) and at least one steamboat.
Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick (who was developing high pressure stationary steam engines for Cornwall's industries) produced the world's first locomotive in 1802 by mounting an engine on wheels to run on rails.
Richard Trevithick, the inventor and mining engineer, was born in the hamlet (then in the ecclesiastical parish of Illogan).
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Richard Trevithick of Cornwall had experimented with various models of steam locomotive, and in 1805 his work had culminated in an engine for the Wylam Colliery.
In 1802, Homfray commissioned engineer Richard Trevithick to build built one of his high pressure steam engines to drive a hammer at the Penydarren Ironworks.
On February 21, 1804 at the Penydarren ironworks at Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales, the first self-propelled railway steam engine or steam locomotive, built by Richard Trevithick, was demonstrated.