The Boyhood of Great Inventors

by A. Fraser Robertson

So he actually went to school at nights—three times a week, spending 3d. out of his wages to be taught to read and write. He laboured on and made progress, and in time he wrote and read, and by-and-by he took another step and added to these arithmetic. With marvellous quickness he “caught on” to figures. In the long weary night shifts sitting by the blaze of the fire he would “work” the sums his master had “set” him or write his copies, just as years after, so eager was he to seize every opportunity that offered, he would many a time (in odd moments) chalk his sums on the sides of the coal waggons!

So little by little, by untiring labour and unwearied industry, by “neglecting nothing,” he rose. The miners who were his daily companions were, many of them, a rough lot. Their life was a hard one and their pleasures few, and on Saturday afternoons—pay-day—their amusements were cock-fighting, dog-fighting, and drinking in the ale-house, while the future great engineer might be found engaged in pulling to pieces his engine, cleaning it, getting to know it as we know the character, the habits, the face of our dearest friend, all the time laying in such a store of practical knowledge as was to serve him in good stead in time to come.

Not that George did not delight in exercise. Indeed, few of his companions could equal him in athletics. There was nothing he enjoyed like challenging them to feats of strength in throwing the hammer or in lifting heavy weights. And even in comparative old age he loved to engage in a wrestle with a friend.

About this time George had a favourite dog which he taught to fetch and carry his dinner in a pitcher tied round his neck. At the appointed hour the creature used to go straight to his master, turning neither to the right nor to the left. But one day he was beset with danger in the shape of a bigger dog with murder in its eye. George’s dog closed with it, and a deadly tussle began, but it beat the bully and came off victorious but bleeding. When he reached his master the pitcher was there, but the dinner was spilt; but George was prouder far, when an onlooker described the fight, of his dog’s courage than he would have been of the most sumptuous feast.

But in spite of his larger wage money was scarce, and George beat about in his own mind how he was to earn a few extra shillings. With keen eye ever on the outlook for what lay nearest, he lighted on the shoes of his fellow-workmen! He took to mending these, and he mended them so well that the pitmen soon got into the way of making George their cobbler. And from this he went on to making shoe-lasts for the village shoemaker. In this way it came to pass that in a fortnight’s time he would sometimes make as much as £2. When he had by long and careful labour saved his first guinea great was his delight. “I am now a rich man!” he said.

Yet another source of earning money was at hand. One day the chimney of his house went on fire, and being drenched with water, the soot and water together succeeded in damaging an eight-day clock that stood in his kitchen. Money was still scarce, and the watchmaker did not work without pay, so George set to work and took the clock to pieces, cleaned it, and put it together again. Rumours of this new “handiness” spread, and colliers from far and near sent their watches and clocks to him to doctor. It was almost as if nothing came amiss to these wonderful hands or, indeed, to that wonderful brain.

A wheezy engine pump, a clock out of gear, a pair of worn-out shoes—he had a remedy for all. Painstaking, conscientious, thorough—the work of the boy shadowed forth the success of the man.

If I had space I could tell you how, after he ceased to be a boy, he became a splendid man. That divine capacity—the creative faculty for making something out of nothing—that had been struggling long within him came to the surface, and he burst on the world as an Inventor.

The boon he gave to men—the thing with which his name will ever be linked in history—is the Locomotive Steam Engine.

What battles he fought for it when the country rose in arms and said they would rather hold by the old post-horses and coaches that had been good enough for their fathers! They were hard to convince. They declared if railways and trains came the country would be ruined. The engines would vomit forth smoke. No bird could live in the poisoned air. Game all over the country would be spoiled. The sparks that came from the engine would set fire to the houses near which they passed. Hens would stop laying! Cattle would cease to graze! The man who said he would send engines flying through the air at the rate of twenty miles an hour was a fool and a maniac!