The slow march of knowledge and of time has at last revealed the worth and established the character of an illustrious and unfortunate man of genius, who only lived to complete his mighty design and carry it happily into effect. Macaulay thus refers to the Marquis of Worcester:—
"The Marquis had observed the expansive power of moisture rarefied by heat. After many experiments, he had succeeded in constructing a rude steam-engine, which he called a fire-waterwork, and which he pronounced to be an admirable and most forcible instrument of propulsion."
But the Marquis was suspected to be a madman, and known to be a Papist, his inventions therefore found no favourable reception. His fire-waterwork might, perhaps, furnish matter for conversation at a meeting of the Royal Society, but was not applied to any practical purpose.
The next engine was invented by Captain Savery, in 1698, for the purpose of raising water by the help of fire. Newcomen came next, followed by James Watt.
And here I must pay a passing tribute to the inventive genius and wonderful discoveries of James Watt, to whom, perhaps, more than to any other man, the world is indebted for the beneficial results which have flown from the development of steam power.
Some six hundred years after Roger Bacon's prophecy, another prophet arose. In 1804, so writes a popular author, "George Stephenson was a poor labourer, his son Robert lying in his cradle; then the stage-coach dragged along its weary course at about five miles an hour, and a letter posted in London would reach Edinburgh perhaps in a week. In 1824 the father said to the son:—
"I tell you what I think, my lad. You will live to see the day, though I may not, when railroads will supersede all other modes of conveyance; when mail coaches will go by railway, and railways become the great highway for the King and his subjects. The time is coming when it will be cheaper for a working man to travel by railway than to walk on foot."
A bold, a daring, but a great social and patriotic prediction: both father and son lived to see it fulfilled. These wonderful changes have been brought about through the perseverance of a quintuple alliance—the Stephensons, Brunels, and Locke—of each of whom it may be said, if you seek his monument, "Look not at the place of his birth, his abode, or his death, but survey his works throughout the greater part of the habitable globe."
In 1824 the first locomotive constructed by George Stephenson travelled at the rate of six miles an hour; in 1829 the "Rocket" travelled at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, and obtained the prize of five hundred pounds offered by the directors of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Company for the best locomotive.
In 1834 the "Firefly" attained a speed of twenty miles an hour; and at the present moment locomotives have increased their speed to over sixty miles an hour. Merciless ridicule attended the introduction of railway travelling; and in reference to a proposed line between London and Woolwich, a writer in the "Quarterly Review" not only backed "Old Father Thames" against it for any sum, but assured his readers that the people of Woolwich "would as soon suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve's ricochet rockets as trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine—a high-pressure engine, and going at the rate of eighteen miles an hour."