George Stephenson George Stephenson' s work in the past has helped to shape the railway network as we know it today.
George Stephenson was born in Wylam just outside Newcastle in 1781. When he was eight years old George ( being the second child ) went to work for the first time. He earned two pence a day for looking after a widow's cows. Then George found a job at the mine. When the coal came up out of the pit George, like most of the local boys had to remove the stones. Next at the age of fourteen years old he helped his father who was a fireman of the pumping engine at the coal mine. Unfortunately the mine closed and George and his father had to find fresh work. So George and his parents moved away to a different area where he found a job looking after pumping engine with a fellow called Bill Coe which pleased him. Soon he became so intrested in the engine they were looking after that on week ends he would take it apart, clean and oil the parts and have it working again by Monday. One day the colliery engineer told George's father" The lad's a born engineer." All because his engine was running smoothly. At the age of eighteen he went to night school for a penny a week and learnt how to write his name. Next he moved to another school to learn arithmetic. Soon he was reading out the news sheets to the other miners. The news sheets were about the war against Napoleon. George started taking on other jobs like mending shoes. While in this business he met a girl called Francis Henderson. George asked her to marry him and they married soon after. Their first born was Robert Stephenson who also is quite important in the history of British rail. Next they had a daughter who was called Fanny but she died within months of her birth. Then Francis Henderson died of cancer. So he married his second wife, Betty in 1820. As he got older it became clear that he was a competent, civil and mechanical engineer. One of his early inventions was a miners safety lamp which was widely used. Another of his inventions was his first steam engine Blucher which he built in 1820. He was made chief engineer of the Stockton and Darlington Railway which was opened in 1825 and it was the first public railway in the world using steam locomotives. He then went on to engineer several other railways including the Liverpool and Manchester Railway which was the world's first inter city railway which opened in 1830. He built the Grand Junction Railway and the Manchester and Leeds railway. Once while tunnelling in Derbyshire he came across rich seams of coal. He was tunnelling for the North Midland company. He also went into business with George Hudson and Joseph Sanders. Together they opened ironworks, coal mines and limestone quarries. Meanwhile there was a constant demand for locomotives from all over the world including America. The early rail roads of America got their first locomotives from George Stephenson's factory in Newcastle. George Stephenson spent his last years living in Tapton House where he ran a small farm. While he was there he experimented in breeding stock and tried to find out how to speed up fattening up chickens. In 1848 George Stephenson the Father of Railways passed away. George Stephenson was a kindly man with a great love of children and a strange knack of taming wild birds His virtues were perseverance and shrewdness and he had a gift of imagination. George Stephenson was a gifted man who's mind never stopped trying to work out how things worked As a result he made a great contribution to engineering in particular and we all benefit from his inventions. Works Cited 1. Unstead, R. J., People in History. London; Morrison and Gibb Limited, 1957. 2. Holland, Julian, History of Britain's Railways. Glasgow; Harper Collins publishers, 2015.
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AuthorHello I am Pedr and I like modern trains. Archives
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