CHAP. VI. ORIGIN OF THE LOCOMOTIVE. 73 



CHAPTER VI. 



EARLY HISTORY OF THE LOCOMOTIVE GEORGE STEPHENSON 

 BEGINS ITS IMPROVEMENT. 



THE rapid increase in the coal trade of the Tyne about thel 

 beginning of the present century had the effect of stimu-! 

 lating the ingenuity of \nechanics, and encouraging them 1 

 to devise improved methods of transporting the coal from \ 

 the pits to the shipping places. From our introductory I 

 chapter, it will have been observed that the improvements 

 which had thus far been effected were confined almost 

 entirely to the road. The railway waggons still con-f 

 tinued to be drawn by horses. By improving and flat- 

 tening the tramway, considerable economy in horse-power 

 had indeed been secured ; but unless some more effective 

 method of mechanical traction could be devised, it was 

 clear that railway improvement had almost reached its 

 limits. 



Many expedients had been tried with this object. 

 One of the earliest was that of hoisting sails upon the 

 waggons, and driving them along the waggon-way, as 

 a ship is driven through the water by the wind. This 

 method seems to have been employed by Sir Humphrey 

 Mackworth, an ingenious coal-miner at Neath in 

 Glamorganshire, about the end of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury. In Waller's ' Essay on Mines,' published in 1698, 

 the writer highly eulogises Sir Humphrey's "new 

 sailing- waggons, for the cheap carriage of his coal to 

 the waterside, whereby one horse does the work of ten 

 at all times ; but when any wind is stirring (which is 



