THE GROWTH OF THE STEAM-ENGINE. 



267 



miner." When still a child, he exhibited great mechanical talent and 

 unusual love of study. 



When set at work about the mines, his attention to duty and his 

 intelligence obtained for him rapid promotion, until, when about 

 seventeen years of age, he was made engineer, and took charge of the 

 pumping-engine at which his father was fireman. 



A little later he was made engine-wright at Killingworth, where 

 he soon inspired those who employed him with such confidence in his 

 skill and reliability as to obtain an opportunity to design his first loco- 

 motive-engine, Lord Ravensworth, one of the principal proprietors, 

 furnishing the necessary funds. 



60. In 1815 he applied the blast-pipe in the chimney, by which the 

 puff of the exhaust steam is made useful in intensifying the draught, 

 and applied it successfully to his second locomotive, here seen in sec- 



Fig. 30. Stephenson's Locomotive, 1815. 



tion (Fig. 30). This is the essential characteristic of the locomotive- 



engine. 



In 1815, therefore, we may say that the modern locomotive steam- 

 engine came into existence, for it is this invention of the blast-pipe 

 that gives it its life, and it is the mechanical adaptation of this and 

 of the other organs of the steam-engine to locomotion that gives 

 George Stephenson his greatest claim to distinction. 



61. In 1825 the Stockton & Darlincfton Railroad was onened, 

 and one of Stephenson's locomotives, in which he employed his 

 " steam-blast," was successfully used, drawing passenger as well as 

 coal trains. Stephenson had at this time become engineer of the 

 road. 



The time required to travel the distance of twelve miles was two 



