Triumphs of Invention and Discovery in Art and Science

by J. Hamilton Fyfe

In 1821 George Stephenson got the appointment of engineer, with £300 of salary, to the Stockton and Darlington Railway Company, in the Act of Parliament for which power was given to use locomotive engines, if needful, either for the conveyance of goods or passengers. When the line was opened, it was worked partly by horses and partly by locomotive and stationary engines. This led to a partnership between Mr. Edward Pease of Darlington, the chief projector of the line, and Stephenson, in a locomotive manufactory in Newcastle,—for many years the only one of the kind in existence.

Meanwhile, young Robert Stephenson, having spent a year or two in gaining a practical acquaintance with the machinery and working of a colliery, went to the University of Edinburgh, where he spent a session in attending the courses of lectures on chemistry, natural philosophy, and geology. He made the best of his opportunities; and that he might profit to the utmost by the lectures, he studied short-hand, and took them all down verbatim, transcribing his notes every evening before he went to bed. Robert brought home the prize for mathematics, and showed he had made so much progress at college that, though the £80 which the session cost was a large sum to his father at that time, George never failed, then or afterwards, to declare that it was one of the best investments he had ever made.

After a year or two in his father's locomotive factory, Robert spent two or three years in charge of the machinery of a mining company in Columbia, and returned to England at the close of 1827, to find the great question, "Whether locomotives can be successfully and profitably applied to passenger traffic?" hotly agitated, his father, almost alone, taking the side of the travelling, against that of the fixed engines, and insisting that the wheel and the rail were clearly and closely part of one system.

The success of the Darlington line induced the Liverpool merchants to project a line between that town and Manchester; and George Stephenson was almost unanimously chosen engineer, though it was still undetermined whether the new line should be worked by steam or horse power. But, apart from that question, a great, and, as it appeared to most of the engineers of the time, an insurmountable difficulty existed in the quagmire of Chat Moss,—an enormous mass of watery pulp, which rose in height in wet, and sank in dry weather like a sponge, and over whose treacherous depths it was pronounced impossible to form a firm road. It was perfect madness to think of such a thing, said the engineers, and none of them would support Stephenson's scheme; but he resolved to see what could be done. Truck-load after truck-load of stuff was emptied into the moss, and still the insatiable bog kept gaping as though it had not had half a feed. The directors, alarmed, would have abandoned the project, had they not been so deeply involved that they were obliged to let Stephenson continue. But he never doubted himself—not for a moment. He only pushed on the works more vigorously; and, before six months were over, the directors found themselves whirling along over the very bog they expected all their capital was to be fruitlessly sunk to the bottom of. Still, no decision had been come to as to whether locomotive or fixed engines were to be adopted; and the Stephensons were still battling bravely in favour of the locomotive against a host of opponents. Robert did his father good service by the able and pithy pamphlets which he wrote on the subject; and at length their perseverance was rewarded by the directors consenting to employ a locomotive, if they could get one that would run at the rate of ten miles an hour, and not weigh more than six tons, including tender; and offering a reward of £500 for the best engine fulfilling these conditions. George Stephenson and his son set to work immediately, and the product of their united skill and ingenuity was the celebrated Rocket, which carried off the prize, and attained a speed of twenty-nine miles on the opening day. The practicability and success of the locomotive was now beyond a doubt; from that day forward public opinion began to turn. Of course, for many a long year afterwards there were not wanting numbers of bigoted men of the old school who cried down the new-fangled system, and would hear of no means of transit but the stage-coach and the canal-boat. But shrewd folk, like the old Duke of Bridgewater, whose faculties were sharpened by their pockets being in danger, could not help crying out, "There's mischief in these tram-ways! I wish the canals mayn't suffer;" and, within ten years of the day when the Rocket went puffing triumphantly along the Liverpool and Manchester line, most sensible people had become convinced of the importance of the locomotive railway, and scarcely a principal town in the country but was supplied with a line.

The Stephensons had fought a hard fight for their protegé, "rail and wheel," and now they were to reap the fruits of their enterprise and foresight. To nearly all the most important of the new lines George Stephenson acted as engineer; and thus, in the course of two years, above 321 miles of railway were constructed under his superintendence, at a cost of £11,000,000 sterling. Robert at first left his father to attend to the laying out of railways, and directed his attention to the improvement of the locomotive in all its details, experimenting incessantly, and trying now one new device, now another. "It was astonishing," says Mr. Smiles, "to observe the rapidity of the improvements effected,—every engine turned out of Stephenson's workshops exhibiting an advance upon its predecessor in point of speed, power, and working efficiency.

By this time George had taken up his residence at Tapton House, near Chesterfield, where he continued to reside for the remainder of his life. Close by were some extensive coal-pits, which he had taken in lease, and from which he supplied London with the first coals sent by railway. He was now a man of wealth and fame, known and honoured throughout his own country, and in many foreign ones, and blessed with many a staunch, true friend. More than once he was offered knighthood by Sir Robert Peel, but declined the honour. As he grew up in years, he gradually abandoned his railway business to the charge of his son, and settled down into a quiet country gentleman of agricultural tastes. He was very fond of gardening and farming, and spent many a long day superintending the operations in the fields. When a boy, he had always been very fond of taming birds and rabbits, and had once had flocks of robins, which, in the hard winter, used to come hopping round his feet for crumbs. And now, in his old age, he had special pets among his dogs and horses, and was proud of his superior breed of rabbits. There was scarcely a nest on his estate that he was not acquainted with; and he used to go round from day to day to look at them, and see that they were kept uninjured.

The year before his death he visited Sir Robert Peel at Drayton Manor. Dr. Buckland, the geologist, was of the party. One Sunday, as they were returning from church, they observed a train speeding along the valley in the distance.

"Now, Buckland," said Mr. Stephenson, "I have a poser for you. Can you tell me what is the power that is driving that train?"

"Well," said the other, "I suppose it is one of your big engines."

"But what drives the engine?"