secure fair play from the appointed judge, he took it to the Morrisons in Newcastle, and got them to put their stamp upon it. So that it is possible the Killingworth brakesman, afterwards the inventor of the safety lamp and the originator of the railway system, and John Morrison, the last-maker, afterwards the translator of the Scriptures into the Chinese language, may have confronted each other in solemn contemplation over the successful last, which won the verdict coveted by its maker.
Sometimes he would endeavour to impart to his fellow-workmen the results of his scientific reading. Everything that he learnt from books was so new and so wonderful to him, that he regarded the facts he drew from them in the light of discoveries, as if they had been made but yesterday. Once he tried to explain to some of the pitmen how the earth was round, and kept turning round. But his auditors flatly declared the thing to be impossible, as it was clear that “at the bottom side they must fall off!” “Ah!” said George, “you don’t quite understand it yet.” His son Robert also early endeavoured to communicate to others the information which he had gathered at school; and Dr. Bruce has related that, when visiting Killingworth on one occasion, he found him engaged in teaching algebra to such of the pitmen’s boys as would become his pupils.
While Robert was still at school, his father proposed to him during the holidays that he should construct a sun-dial, to be placed over their cottage-door at West Moor. “I expostulated with him at first,” said Robert, “that I had not learnt sufficient astronomy and mathematics to enable me to make the necessary calculations. But he would have no denial. ‘The thing is to be done,’ said he; ‘so just set about it at once.’ Well; we got a ‘Ferguson’s Astronomy,’ and studied the subject together. Many a sore head I had while making the necessary calculations to adapt the dial to the latitude of Killingworth. But at length it was fairly drawn out on paper, and then my father got a stone, and we hewed, and carved, and polished it, until we made a very respectable dial of it; and there it is, you see,” pointing to it over the cottage-door, “still quietly numbering the hours when the sun is shining. I assure you, not a little was thought of that piece of work by the pitmen when it was put up, and began to tell its tale of time.” The date carved upon the dial is “August 11th, MDCCCXVI.” Both father and son were in after-life very proud of the joint production. Many years after, George took a party of savans, when attending the meeting of the British Association at Newcastle, over to Killingworth to see the pits, and he did not fail to direct their attention to the sun-dial; and Robert, on the last visit which he made to the place, a short time before his death, took a friend into the cottage, and pointed out to him the very desk, still there, at which he had sat while making his calculations of the latitude of Killingworth.
From the time of his appointment as engineer at the Killingworth Pit, George Stephenson was in a measure relieved from the daily routine of manual labour, having, as we have seen, advanced himself to the grade of a higher class workman. But he had not ceased to be a worker, though he employed his industry in a different way. It might, indeed, be inferred that he had now the command of greater leisure; but his spare hours were as much as ever given to work, either necessary or self-imposed. So far as regarded his social position, he had already reached the summit of his ambition; and when he had got his hundred a year, and his dun galloway to ride on, he said he never wanted to be any higher. When Robert Whetherly offered to give him an old gig, his travelling having so much increased of late, he accepted it with great reluctance, observing, that he should be ashamed to get into it, “people would think him so proud.”
When the High Pit had been sunk, and the coal was ready for working, Stephenson erected his first winding-engine to draw the coals out of the pit, and also a pumping-engine for Long Benton Colliery, both of which proved quite successful. Amongst other works of this time, he projected and laid down a self-acting incline along the declivity which fell towards the coal-loading place near Willington, where he had officiated as brakesman; and he so arranged it, that the full waggons descending drew the empty waggons up the railroad. This was one of the first self-acting inclines laid down in the district.
Stephenson had now much better opportunities than hitherto for improving himself in mechanics. His familiar acquaintance with the steam-engine proved of great value to him. His shrewd insight, and his intimate practical acquaintance with its mechanism, enabled him to apprehend, as if by intuition, its most abstruse and difficult combinations. The practical study which he had given to it when a workman, and the patient manner in which he had groped his way through all the details of the machine, gave him the power of a master in dealing with it as applied to colliery purposes.
Sir Thomas Liddell was frequently about the works, and took pleasure in giving every encouragement to the engine-wright in his efforts after improvement. The subject of the locomotive engine was already closely occupying Stephenson’s attention; although it was still regarded as a curious and costly toy, of comparatively little real use. But he had at an early period detected its practical value, and formed an adequate conception of the might which as yet slumbered within it; and he now bent his entire faculties to the development of its extraordinary powers.
CHAPTER V.
Early History of the Locomotive—George Stephenson begins its Improvement.
The rapid increase in the coal-trade of the Tyne about the beginning of the present century had the effect of stimulating the ingenuity of mechanics, and encouraging them to devise improved methods of transporting the coal from the pits to the shipping places. From our introductory chapter, it will have been observed that the improvements which had thus far been effected were confined almost entirely to the road. The railway waggons still continued to be drawn by horses. By improving and flattening the tramway, considerable economy in horse-power had indeed been secured; but unless some more effective method of mechanical traction could be devised, it was clear that railway improvement had almost reached its limits.
Many expedients had been tried with this object. One of the earliest was that of hoisting sails upon the waggons, and driving them along the waggon-way, as a ship is driven through the water by the wind. This method seems to have been employed by Sir Humphrey Mackworth, an ingenious coal-miner at Neath in Glamorganshire, about the end of the seventeenth century.
After having been lost sight of for more than a century, the same plan of impelling carriages was revived by Richard Lovell Edgworth, with the addition of a portable railway, since revived also, in Boydell’s patent. But although Mr. Edgworth devoted himself to the subject for many years, he failed in securing the adoption of his sailing carriage. It is indeed quite clear that a power so uncertain as wind could never be relied on for ordinary traffic, and Mr. Edgworth’s project was consequently left to repose in the limbo of the Patent Office, with thousands of other equally useless though ingenious contrivances.
A much more favourite scheme was the application of steam power for the purpose of carriage traction. Savery, the inventor of the working steam-engine, was the first to propose its employment to propel vehicles along the common roads; and in 1759 Dr. Robison, then a young man studying at Glasgow College, threw out the same idea to his friend James Watt; but the scheme was not matured.
The first locomotive steam-carriage was built at Paris by the French engineer Cugnot, a native of Lorraine. It is said to have been invented for the purpose of dragging cannon into the field independent of horses. The original model of this machine was made in 1763. Count Saxe was so much pleased with it, that on his recommendation a full-sized
