STEPHENSON, THE GREAT ENGINEER.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 40, 1 October 1892, Page 9811

STEPHENSON, THE GREAT ENGINEER.

C HEN, some seventy years ago, an anX, nouncement was made of George Stephenson’s locomotive, advertised to travel at the rate of twelve miles an hour, it created the greatest disturbance all over England. A very y wise periodical, which spoke with ' n. authority on all learned subjects, / -fy said: ‘ Twelve miles an hour. As well trust one’s self to be fired oft' on a Congreve rocket-’ Then some man, who thought himself very wise, and who tried to be very funny, said that if the locomotive would go, he would promise to eat stewed engine wheels for breakfast. Then, strangest of all, the very engineers who were consulted as experts, besides deciding all manner of queer things about the new invention, said that it could never be of any use when the weather was bad, because, even if the fire were poked and the pressure of steam kept up till the boiler was ready to burst, no locomotive engine could ever be started in the face of a gale of wind I All of which shows that none of us know everything, even when we have been studying all our lives. Indeed ■studying, unless at the same time we keep our minds wide open" for new ideas, new meanings, and new possibilities, may make us both narrow-minded and stupid. For many of us study merely to prove ourselves right in regard to certain principles we think we know already. This was the trouble with the engineers who laughed at Stephenson's locomotive. They felt so sure of all they knew that they could not believe in there being other things to learn which might be different, contradicting their own previous knowledge. But Stephenson when he studied, strove to discover new things, which was why he, born of poor uneducated parents, really understood more in the end than all the wise neads put together. George Stephenson was the second of a family of six children. His father, the fireman of an old engine at the colliery in Wylara near Newcastle, was so poor that he had to live upon but twelve shillings a week. George was born on the 9th ot June, 1781, and grew up with no education. He went to work early in life in order to help his tather. He herded cows at one penny a day. and then went to hoeing turnips at twopence a day. But in spite of this poverty, George's home was a happy one, and life was full of interest. His father was famous as a teller of stories, and as a lover of birds and all animals. All the children of the village gathered about his engine room door, and tame robins and blackbirds flew in and out of his cottage. So great a love and knowledge of birds indeed was cultivated in George's heart, that long afterwards when he was rich beyond his wildest dreams, and looked upon as one of the most important men of England, nothing delighted him more than a day in the woods with the birds. Men who talked to him then used to say that had he not been great as an inventor, he would certainly have been great as a naturalist. This knowledge was first cultivated in his mind by his old father, who, in spite of all his hard work, was yet so poor that even the other poor miners pitied him as being worse off than themselves.

How to tell yon all that George Stephenson did, is quite beyond me in this little space ; or how to tell you how the locomotive grew ; or how, from the days of Pompeii, little by little the idea of a railway or smooth lines for wheels to run upon, with but slight friction to overcome, has developed in the minds of men. For, you see, inventions were following two ways—one led along the road on which conveyances might run easily ; and the other lay among the conveyances tnemselves, and the discovery of some power other than that of animals, which should propel them. Every ne_w step in progress, however, was opposed. Thus, when in 1776, at the colliery in Sheffield, some man laid cast-iron tracks, the people were so angry, thinking their work would be interfered with, that tney ro«e in fury against the man, tore up his tracks, and hounded him out of town. For three days and nights he had to lie niddeu in a neighbouring wood. When the men who had tried the wind as a propelling power for carriages on the road found that the wind would not do—there being no way of tacking on dry land as there is on the •water—when men had tried the wind and found it unavail-

able, they tried steam. There was a steam-carriage used in Faris in 1769, which could carrv four persons. But no one knew how to turn a corner with it, and when one of these carriages upset going about a curve, the whole principle of steam as a motor was thought to be so dangerous that this carriage was seized, locked up in the arsenal, and' not allowed to be used again. Thus in every direction men were groping after the same idea, and each discovery and each advance and even each failure helped the world just so much further on to the fulfilment of its purpose. In front of George Stephenson's house, in that mining town of Wylam, where he had been born, the wooden tram road was laid, over which the coal was hauled. So, from the very beginning of his life, this young boy understood the necessity of some such track when ease and swiftness in the movement of vehicles were to be attained. In regard to the power used to move these vehicles, he had one noble impulse always at work within him. urging him onward in his search of means—a desire to make the life of the people about him easier and safer. He had besides undaunted courage, and the wisdom of the man who makes use of every faculty within him, and of every means without him, for gaining the best before giving up in despair, or declaring he had no chance to succeed, or that he had nothing with which to work. Thus, realizing how many lives were destroyed by explosions in the mines, he invented a safety lamp almost at the same time that Sir Humphry Davy invented his. And Stephenson, at the risk of his own life, went down in a dangerous mine to try it.

Yet Stephenson was only a workman, and did not understand enough of the laws of chemistry to know the teal principle which made his lamp good. In searching for something to help others, he had, however, made a discovery equal to that made by the great and learned Davy. He learned how machines were constructed by taking his own to pieces, and also by putting his clock in order when there was no one else to do it. Out of his scant earnings he saved enough to go to school, grown man as he was, in order to be taught to read. As for his locomotive, I have told yon nothing about it because Mr Smiles has written a book and told you so much, and because I wanted you to see by what steps and through what forces of character he, a poor and uneducated miner, had been led to accomplish what all the world had been trying to do for years upon years. His son Robert was distinguished as a great engineer, but it is the humbly-born father that interests me most. For Robert had all the advantages that his father’s wealth and experience could give him. He was educated early in life, he travelled, and had no difficulties to overcome. What is called the Britannia tubular bridge is a great work with which his name will always be associated as a masterspirit. He built the Yictoria Bridge over the St. Lawrence, in fact it is on his ability as an engineer that his fame rests. He never forgot, however, all that he owed his father, and was great enough to realize that of them both, it was his father, George Stephenson, who was, indeed, the greater man.