On 5 October 1828 an extraordinary spectacle took place on the North Turnpike Road near Newcastle upon Tyne. A local philosopher took it upon himself to demonstrate to the public a new type of vehicle of his own devising, ‘the only Travelling Machine that ever was invented in the World to work from the Centre of Gravity, without the Aid of Horse or Steam’. The philosopher intended the Northumberland Eagle Mail to carry him to the farthest reaches of the kingdom – from England to Scotland, from Scotland to Ireland – to deliver his Lecture on Natural Philosophy wherever a suitable paying audience could be assembled. According to reports in the newspapers, however, he barely survived the short ride to Newcastle from his home town Wallsend.

The Northumberland Eagle Mail was constructed according to the principles of A New System of Natural Philosophy, on the Principle of Perpetual Motion (1821). Its designer, also the author of the New System, hoped that its demonstration would secure his position as Northumberland's leading natural philosopher. He also hoped that the people of Northumberland would reward him financially for his ingenuity. Eager to amass a large audience for his performance, he advertised the event in the newspapers, and produced handbills indicating the significance his achievement:

The promotional campaign was a success. A great crowd assembled on the North Road, mostly on the outskirts of Newcastle, to see for themselves this amazing machine of ‘noble and majestic Appearance’, which, it was claimed, was a ‘superior Mode of Travelling to either Riding or Walking’. Yet setting out from his home in Wallsend, the philosopher had barely got underway when he began to sense ‘that his reception was not very flattering’.