---
title: "Goldsworthy Gurney"
chunk: 8/8
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsworthy_Gurney"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:06:20.803004+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

To his inventive genius the world is indebted for the high speed of the locomotive, without which railways could not have succeeded and would never have been made.
In her copy of the Dictionary of National Biography, all references to the blowpipe were amended by hand to his blowpipe.
In 1880 she donated £500 to memorialise "his" Steam Jet, at the stone-laying ceremony for Truro Cathedral, somehow managing to rope the children of the then Prince of Wales to present the money. (The Prince of Wales, HRH Prince Albert Edward was timidly asked whether he minded, and replied "Oh, why not? The boys would stand on their heads if she wished."). Anna Jane's subscription read:

In memory of her father Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, inventor of the steam-jet, as a thank offering to almighty God for the benefit of high speed locomotion whereby His good gifts are conveyed from one nation to another and the word of the Lord is sent unto all parts of the world.
A chiming clock presented by her in 1889 to St Olaf's Church, Poughill, in Bude, was inscribed "His inventions and discoveries in steam and electricity rendered transport by land and sea so rapid that it became necessary for all England to keep uniform clock time".
A final Anna Jane tribute was a stained glass window in St. Margaret's, Westminster (destroyed during the Second World War), with an inscription part of which reads:

He originated the Electric Telegraph, High Speed Locomotion and Flashing Light Signalling. He invented the Steam Jet and the Oxy-Hydrogen Blowpipe.

== Publications ==
Lectures on the Elements of Chemical Science

== See also ==

Timeline of hydrogen technologies

== Notes ==

== References ==

Dudley-Stamp, B. (1993). Bude's Forgotten Genius – Sir Goldsworthy Gurney. Bude-Stratton Town Council.

== Further reading ==

== External links ==
Sir Goldsworthy Gurney Archived 9 February 2020 at the Wayback Machine from The Building Engineering Services Heritage Group, from which an early version of this article was derived
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. 287, 15 December 1827, from Project Gutenberg, in which there is contemporaneous article on Gurney's steam carriage.
Review of The Life and Times of Sir Goldsworthy Gurney from the Lehigh University Press
Iron Horse of Fable?—Article on Gurney's Steam Drag from the Steam Car Club of Britain
Mr. Goldsworthy Gurney's case—details of the select committee enquiry, from the British Official Publications Collaborative Reader Information Service
Sir Goldsworthy Gurney—biography from the University of Houston
Bude Stratton Museum has exhibits relating to Gurney