Matthew Murray

Matthew Murray (1765 to 1826) was an English steam engine and machine tool manufacturer who designed and built the first commercially viable steam locomotive, the twin-cylinder Salamanca, in 1812. Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, he was apprenticed, worked as a journeyman mechanic at a flax mill in Darlington and moved to Leeds in 1789 to work for the flax manufacturer John Marshall, where he patented flax-spinning machinery including the wet spinning technique. In 1795 he went into partnership with David Wood, and the firm, joined by James Fenton and William Lister and known as Fenton, Murray and Wood, moved to Water Lane in Holbeck in 1797. Murray was its technical innovator and the partner in charge of obtaining orders. He worked to make steam engines simpler, lighter and more compact, introduced a hypocycloidal straight line mechanism and the horizontal piston, designed the Round Foundry, and won the Royal Society of Arts gold medal in 1809 for his heckling machine. He died on 20 February 1826, and his firm survived until 1843.