CHAP. IV., 5.] 



MECHANICS. GEORGE STEPHENSON. 



85 



(391.) 



(392.) 

 George Sti 

 phenson ; 



His early 

 difficulties 



and charac 

 ter. 



(393.) 

 He con- 

 trives a 

 safety 

 lamp; 



been a prudent man his fortune was now made ; but 

 it is stated that about 1827 he returned to this 

 country impoverished and disappointed. I am un- 

 acquainted with his further history. 



In the meantime the locomotive engine, which 

 Trevithick had long abandoned to its fate, was be- 

 coming known in the hands of a man perhaps of less 

 genius but of greater sagacity and perseverance. 

 GEORGE STEPHENSON, civil engineer, was born in 



"1780 near Newcastle, of respectable persons in the 

 humblest rank of life. His father was either a com- 

 mon pitman or otherwise employed about the collier- 

 ies of the district, and young Stephenson, without 

 any advantages of education, began to labour for his 

 bread at an early age. His work appears to have 

 been always connected with the machinery of the pits 

 above ground, and not with their excavation. Thus 

 he rose gradually to be an engine-man at the wages 

 of twelve shillings a week. This was at Killingworth 



' near Newcastle, where he showed considerable me- 

 chanical ingenuity, and gradually gained the confi- 

 dence of his employers. Having married in 1802, 

 he had a son born the following year, the present 

 Mr Robert Stephenson, M.P., whom he brought up 

 with the tenderest care, and whom he ever and justly 

 regarded with a father's pride. In order to bestow 

 upon him the advantage of that education of which 

 he had himself felt the want, it is stated that he made 

 money at extra hours by mending his neighbours' 

 clocks and watches, and finally, in more prosperous 

 days, sent his son to complete his education at the 

 University of Edinburgh. George Stephenson never 

 acquired much book-learning himself, but by natural 

 sagacity and observation he attained to a sound 

 knowledge of mechanical principles. We do not 

 claim for him, however, the character of great inven- 



tiveness. His skill rather lay in perceiving how far 

 methods and contrivances already known might be 

 pushed to an advantageous result. He possessed 

 that shrewd decision which ingenious persons often 

 want, enabling him to detect what is truly valuable 

 in the numerous mechanical schemes which at any 

 time are afloat, and to devise the means of realizing 

 them. He also possessed that confidence in his own 

 judgment which is necessary to carry out principles 

 to their legitimate extent, but from which feebler or 

 less practical minds usually shrink. 



Not to interrupt the principal topic of this section, 

 I will here only mention that in 1815 he set about 

 inventing a safety lamp for mines at a time when the 

 recent heavy loss of life in his own neighbourhood 

 had excited general attention ; insomuch that Sir H. 

 Davy had been specially invited, by a meeting of per- 

 sons interested, to propose a remedy. I shall in an- 

 other place speak of the result ; but in the meantime 

 I may state, that George Stephenson made some expe- 

 riments of his own, which, leading him in the same 

 track which Davy followed, that of admitting the foul 

 air to the lamp through long narrow tubes, might in 



(394.) 



(395.) 



the end have led him to a construction analogous 

 to that of the safety lamp. As matters stood, it 

 is not surprising that his efforts, though highly me- 

 ritorious, led him slowly and uncertainly towards 

 the goal which Davy, having once sighted, arrived at 

 with that rapid instinct in which he has never been 

 surpassed. Stephenson was left behind, but was 

 rewarded by a handsome gift offered by his local 

 admirers, who, in doing so, naturally rather consi- 

 dered the difficulties overcome by their humble 

 neighbour than the strictly comparative merit of the 

 two inventions. 



But it is of the locomotive and of the railway that 

 we have here to speak. 



The former, we have seen, had been brought to 

 considerable perfection by Trevithick. An engine on studies the 

 his plan had been constructed and used by Mr Blackett 

 of Wylam in Northumberland, near the place where 

 Stephenson resided, and was the basis of his im- 

 provements. Blackett's engine had two cylinders, an 

 addition often ascribed to Stephenson, but which, as 

 we have said, was included in Trevithick's patent. 

 What he saw of the performance of this machine ap- 

 pears to have convinced Stephenson, once for all, of 

 the groundlessness of an opinion which then and for 

 long after haunted the minds of railway engineers. 

 This opinion was, that the adhesion between the 

 wheels of a locomotive engine and the smooth iron 

 surfaces of the rails must be insufficient to allow the 

 impulsion of the train, at least with any degree of 

 velocity, or up the smallest inclination. Trevithick dismisses 

 had a scheme for increasing the adhesion, and this the fear of 

 ideal improvement was the subject of repeated pa- insuffici ent 



/. ! " i , innn T adheSlOD to 



tents, some ot a singular nature, between 1802 and tlie railSj 

 1824, one of which, Blenkinsop's, provided a cog- 

 wheel in the engine working into a rack on the rail, 

 which was actually in use down at least to 1830. It 

 is rather a singular thing that men spurning theories, 

 as was the fashion of the engineers of that day, and 

 especially those of Smeaton's school, should have 

 thought as little of an appeal to experiment on so 

 simple a matter as did the followers of Aristotle in 

 the seventeenth century, when Galileo offered to con- 

 vince them that light and heavy bodies fall equally 

 fast. Forgetting that direct friction is always large, 

 and that it varies in proportion to the pressure, these 

 practical men could not get over their first impres- 

 sion, that iron must slide on iron long before a heavy 

 train could be set in motion. It was characteristic 

 of Stephenson's decision of character, that he dis- 

 missed all doubts on the subject so soon as his obser- 

 vations seemed distinct, and that he did not hesitate 

 to carry out his belief to its consequences, and to 

 maintain his confidence in the locomotive engine 

 against all antagonists. 



I shall not stop to particularize Stephenson's first (396.) 

 improvements on the locomotive, which were rather G - Stephen 

 in detail than in principle. He saw clearly all along prove 1 . 111 " 

 that if it was to work at high speeds he must in every ments. 



