(391.) 
(392.) 
George Ste- 
phenso ; + umblest rank of life. 
Cnar. IV., § 5.) 
been a prudent man his fortune was now made; but 
it is stated that after a year or two he returned to 
this country impoverished and disappointed. I am 
unacquainted 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. 
Gzorce StepHenson, civil engineer, was born in 
1780 near Newcastle, of respectable persons in the 
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 
His early of twelve shillings a week. This was at Killingworth 
difficulties, year Newcastle, where he showed considerable me- 
and charac- tiveness. 
ter. 
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- 
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. Healso 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 
MECHANICS.—GEORGE STEPHENSON. 
883 
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 
(394.) 
(395.) 
studies the 
his plan had been constructed and used by Mr Blackett °omotive 
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 
engine ; 
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- insufficient 
adhesion to 
tents, some of a singular nature, between 1802 and 4. pails, 
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 leastto 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- 
vitice 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 -Stephen- 
in detail than in principle. He saw clearly all along 
son’s im- 
rove~ 
that if it was to work at high speeds he must in every ments, 
