George Stephenson
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- For the British politician, see George Stevenson.
George Stephenson (9 June 1781 – 12 August 1848) was an English mechanical engineer who designed a famous and historically important steam-powered locomotive named Rocket and is known as the "Father of British Steam Railways". The Victorians considered him a great example of diligent application and thirst for improvement, with self-help advocate Samuel Smiles particularly praising his achievements. His rail gauge of 4 ft 8½ in (1435 mm), originally called "Stephenson gauge", has become the standard gauge for the majority of the world's railways.
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Life
Early career
George Stephenson was born in Wylam, Northumberland, 9.3 miles (15 km) west of Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1748, a wagonway—an arrangement similar to a railway, but with wooden tracks and designed to support horse-drawn carts—had been built, running for several miles from the Wylam colliery to the River Tyne. The young Stephenson grew up near it, and in 1802 gained employment as an engine-man at a coal mine. For the next ten years his knowledge of steam engines increased, until in 1812 he stopped operating them for a living, and started building them.
Stephenson designed his first locomotive in 1814, a travelling engine designed for hauling coal on a coal site. Named Blucher, it could haul 30 tons of coal in a load, and was the first successful flanged-wheel adhesion locomotive: it used flanged wheels to rest on the track, and its traction depended only on the contact between the wheel and the rail. Over the next five years, he built 16 more engines.
His ingenuity also found other outlets. In 1815, he developed a miners' safety lamp, known as the Geordie lamp to distinguish it from the Davy lamp invented by Humphry Davy at much the same time. (There was an outbreak of controversy over which was invented first.)
As his success grew, Stephenson was hired to build an 8-mile (13-km) railway from Hetton colliery to Sunderland. The finished result used a combination of gravity pulling the load down inclines and locomotives for level and upward stretches, and was the first railway to use no animal power at all.
In 1821, a project began to build the Stockton and Darlington Railway. Originally the plan was to use horses to draw coal carts over metal rails, but after company director Edward Pease met Stephenson he agreed to change plans. Work began in 1822, and in September 1825 Stephenson completed the first locomotive for the new railway: at first named Active, it was soon renamed Locomotion. The Stockton and Darlington opened on 27 September 1825. Driven by Stephenson, Locomotion hauled an 80-ton load of coal and flour for nine miles (15 km) over two hours, reaching a speed of 24 miles per hour (39 km/h) over one stretch. The first purpose-built passenger car, dubbed Experiment, was also attached, and carried a load of dignitaries for the opening journey. It was the first time passenger traffic had been run on a steam-driven locomotive railway.
Rise to fame
Image:George Stephenson - National Railway Museum - 2005-10-15.jpg
While building the S&D railway, Stephenson had noticed that even small inclines greatly reduced the speed of his locomotives. (Additionally, even slight declines would have made the primitive brakes next to useless.) He came to the conclusion that railways should be kept as level as possible. He used this knowledge while working on the Bolton and Leigh Railway and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, executing a series of difficult cuts, embankments and stone viaducts to smooth the route the railways took. Defective surveying for the original route of the LMR (caused by the hostility of some of the affected landowners) meant that Stephenson was given a very bad time during Parliamentary scrutiny of the original bill, which was rejected. A revised bill with a new alignment was submitted and passed in a subsequent session. The revised alignment presented a considerable problem: the crossing of Chat Moss, an apparently bottomless peat bog, which Stephenson eventually overcame by unusual means, effectively floating the line across it.
As the Liverpool & Manchester approached completion in 1829, the directors of that company arranged for a competition to decide who would build the locomotives for the new railway. The Rainhill Trials were run in October of that year. Stephenson's entry was Rocket, and its impressive performance in winning the contest made it arguably the most famous machine in the world.
When the L&MR opened on 15 September 1830, the opening ceremony was a considerable event, drawing luminaries from the government and industry, including the then-Prime Minister, the Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. The day was marred by the death of William Huskisson a Member of Parliament for Liverpool who was struck and killed by Rocket, but the railway was a resounding success. Stephenson became a very famous man, and was offered the position of chief engineer for a wide variety of other railways.
However, his conservative views on the capabilities of locomotives meant that he tended to favour routes and civil engineering which were more costly than his successors thought necessary. For example, rather than the West Coast Main Line taking the direct route over Shap favoured by Joseph Locke between Lancaster and Carlisle, Stephenson reported in favour of a longer sea-level route via Ulverston and Whitehaven. Locke's route was preferred.
Stephenson therefore tended to become a reassuring name, rather than a cutting-edge technical adviser. He was selected as the first president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers upon its formation in 1847. He had by this time settled into semi-retirement supervising his mining interests in Derbyshire. (Tunnelling work for the North Midland Railway had revealed unworked coal seams, and Stephenson had put much of his money into their exploitation.) Rich and successful for the remainder of his career, George Stephenson died on 12 August 1848 in Chesterfield, England.
Legacy
Stephenson's son, Robert Stephenson, was also a noted locomotive engineer, and was heavily involved in the creation of many of his father's engines from Locomotion onwards. Joseph Locke was initially apprenticed to George Stephenson, eventually being promoted to chief engineer on some of the schemes he instigated (e.g. the Grand Junction Railway).
The local museum in Chesterfield, England has a room full of Stephenson memorabilia, including the straight thick glass tubes in which Stephenson (inventive to the last) grew his cucumbers to stop them curving. George Stephenson College, founded in 2001 on the University of Durham's Queen's Campus in Stockton-on-Tees, is named after him. Also named after him and his son is the Stephenson Railway Museum in North Shields.
As a tribute to the life and works of the engineer, a bronze statue of George Stephenson was unveiled at Chesterfield Railway Station (which is overlooked by Tapton House, where Stephenson spent the last ten years of his life) on 28 October 2005, which marked the completion of improvements to the station. At the event, a full size working replica of Rocket was on show, which then spent two days on public display at the Chesterfield Market Festival.
See also
- History of Science and Technology
- Industrial revolution
- Railway
- Steam engine
- Traincs:George Stephenson
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