George**, the founder of the railway system in Britain, and the principal improver, or (as some think) almost originator, of the present locomotive steam-engine. Some incidents in the life of this great mechanic having been mentioned in Professor James Forbes' *Dissertation* in vol. i., (pp. 883, &c.) of this work, and some observations having been there added on his part and share in the construction of the locomotive-engine, it will be unnecessary in this place to repeat what is previously recorded, and we shall therefore only cursorily notice the chief points in the life and mechanical triumphs of the subject of this biographical sketch.

In a poor cottage in the primitive, rough village of Wylam, eight miles west of Newcastle-on-Tyne, George Stephenson was born, on the 9th of June 1781. The various incidents connected with his humble origin and early occupations have the air of romance when contrasted with his ultimate attainments, fortune, and fame. Few tours in this country are more suggestive than one which the writer has undertaken to trace out the scenes and circumstances in which George Stephenson first lived and laboured; nor even yet has the most been made of the wonderful transition from obscurity to celebrity, from abject poverty to abundant wealth, from comparative ignorance to ample knowledge, from primitive simplicity to large experience, which has been exemplified in the life of the Wylam lad—the Killingworth breaksman; the bold projector and constructor of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway; and, finally, the owner and worker of Midland collieries, and the world-known engineer, the companion of men of science, and the father of a son who continued and augmented the glory that gathers round the name of Stephenson.

Taking up the biography of George Stephenson from the year 1804, he became a breaksman at Killingworth Colliery, seven miles north of Newcastle. The times were hard, taxes heavy, and his own prospects in particular rather gloomy. He was drawn for the militia, paid for a substitute, and contemplated emigration to the United States. Poverty prevented the step. He mended clocks and watches, repaired shoes, and cut out pitmen's clothes. Every spare minute was improved, and his observing eye was always vigilant. He improved the winding-engines of the colliery, and was fortunate in repairing and refitting a failing pumping-engine. His fame as an "engine-doctor" grew, and he was appointed colliery engine-wright at Killingworth.

Railways were first employed in the northern collieries, the visitor to which may even now behold some remains of primitive attempts of this kind. The Wylam waggon-way is one of the oldest, and down to 1807 it was formed of wooden spars or rails, and passed close in front of the cottage where George Stephenson was born. In 1808 this wooden road was taken up, and supplanted by a "plateway" of cast-iron (a single line of rails), with sidings. In 1811 a locomotive-engine was ordered from Trevethick; and another in 1812, after the same pattern, was constructed at Gateshead. These ran upon the Wylam Railway, and are interesting though somewhat clumsy specimens of the earlier locomotives. It is remarkable that at this very time steam, in its other applications, had become a great industrial power, and was performing the work of thousands of horses. It had even then revolutionized the whole domain of human industry. It was driving mills and machinery, rolling iron, spinning cotton, grinding corn, and to some extent impelling ships over the waters; but the general adoption of the locomotive, which was to bring together towns and cities, almost to annihilate distance, and to confer upon man as much enjoyment and as many capabilities as if he had been endowed with wings, was not yet thought of, and could hardly have been conceived by the most sanguine spectator of the rude, unwieldy machines then creeping along the plateways of the northern collieries.

Stephenson made his first locomotive at Killingworth, and it was the first engine which had smooth wheels, the constructor being satisfied of sufficient adhesion between the toothless rim and an edge-rail. It was first placed upon the Killingworth Railway on July 25, 1814, but its performances were not remarkable. He constructed his second locomotive in the succeeding year, but its improvements were not great. In 1816 he constructed other engines, in which he further simplified the working parts, and amended the whole by resting the weight on four small cylinders, a plan which was afterwards abandoned for ordinary springs. These engines regularly dragged coals at Killingworth, and the writer has seen one of them at that colliery. Mr Stephenson became engineer of the Hetton Colliery Railway, which was opened in 1822, where five of his locomotives were soon at work. To meet the anticipated demand for these engines, he entered into arrangements with Mr Edward Pease in 1823, and soon afterwards erected the famous locomotive manufactory at Newcastle. The Stockton and Darlington Railway was opened for traffic in 1825, and the first engines employed on it were constructed after the Killingworth model, travelling at a speed of from six to eight miles an hour. Mr Stephenson was appointed in 1826 to survey the line for a railway between Liverpool and Manchester; and the history of this railway is to a great degree that of Mr Stephenson's advances; but when the line was completed the directors hesitated to adopt locomotives. A trial, however, was conceded, a prize of £500 offered for the best engine, and on October 1, 1829, three engines appeared, and competed on the 6th. The Rocket was made by Stephenson. On the evening preceding the trial he added to it the blast-pipe, copied from the Sanspareil, a rival engine by Mr Hackworth. Up to that time the Rocket had only attained 15 miles an hour; but on the following day it ran at the amazing velocity (for that period) of 29 miles an hour, while the Sanspareil could only reach 22 miles. Controversy has settled that the merit of the blast-pipe is due to Mr Hackworth, whose engine, however, was disabled, and the Rocket obtained the prize.

It would be vain to attempt to condense into a few lines the several improvements which the locomotive experienced since that memorable trial, but their leading principles remain to this day, although numerous ingenious engineers have studied all its details, and have devised considerable improvements in its working parts, by which greater economy of fuel has been effected, and greater speed attained. The invention of the steam-blast has been attributed to Mr Stephenson, but those who are intimately acquainted with its history accord it to Mr Hackworth, and this has been contested against Dr Smiles, the biographer of Mr Stephenson.

The summing up of those who hold this view is, that the speed of the locomotive-engine is mainly due to the application of Hackworth's blast-pipe, Booth's or Seguin's multitubular boiler, and Trevethick's high-pressure engine. It is therefore contended that George Stephenson did not contribute any very important inventions to the locomotive, but is entitled to a large share of the merit due to its ultimate success, inasmuch as he admirably simplified the machinery, and brought all possible mechanical skill to bear upon the accuracy and solidity of its workmanship, while as a private and public advocate of its powers and prospects (together with those of railways) he was second to none, manifesting and partly inspiring an almost unlimited faith in this great triumph of mechanical adaptation.

Mr Stephenson attained the culminating point of his fame upon the completion and success of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. His subsequent life was one of activity as a railway engineer; but others now emerged from obscurity, and shared his triumphs, while they rather confirmed than lessened his celebrity. The article RAILWAYS details the various improvements in the system which were adopted at different times; while the history of railway progress, so far as it was contemporaneous with Mr Stephenson's life, displays not more his co-operation than his singleness of purpose and integrity of character. He discountenanced the lamentable railway mania, and stood, in the main, aloof from its trickeries and infatuations. He visited other countries as an engineer, and was greatly honoured in all such visits. Finally, he retired to Tapton, opened extensive collieries, and lived the life of a plain but wealthy country gentleman. In 1845 he took a warm interest in horticulture, built melon-houses, pinceries, and vineyards, and contended as eagerly with the cultivators of exotics as he formerly did with mechanicians, while his early affection for birds and animals revived. We have not referred to his improvements in the miner's lamp, mainly because they are noticed in the preliminary dissertation, already alluded to. He died 12th August, 1848, aged 67. We should say his leading characteristics were sagacity, enterprise, and persistence.

Dr Smiles has written a popular life of this great man, replete with interesting details, but not, we think, always accurate in mechanical history. A "biography in brief" of Mr Stephenson may be found in the little work, Our Coal and our Coal-pits, the People in them, and the Scenes around them (pp. 228, &c.) Several points of interest in the history of the locomotive-engine have been discussed in technical periodicals, and might be advantageously collected into one publication.

(3. R. L.)

Stephenson, Robert, son of the preceding, was almost equally eminent as a mechanical engineer, and perhaps in some respects his father's superior. His father was married to his mother in 1802, and the Stephenson family then resided at Willington, near Newcastle-on-Tyne. Their son Robert was born there in 1803, in an humble cottage, where his father was often busy in making or mending shoes, cleaning clocks, or drawing rough sketches. Robert was christened in the school-house at Wallsend, and his earliest days were spent like those of the children of mechanics. His father's earnest wish was to give his son that education the want of which he himself so severely felt. When a widower, all his savings were accumulated with this object in view. He sent his child to school, and the boy picked up the elements of mechanics by frequenting, during long evenings, the library of the Literary and Philosophical Institute at Newcastle. Adding these acquirements to the lessons of the common workshop, he became expert in his department of knowledge. At Killingworth he made a sun-dial when he was thirteen years of age, and affixed it to his father's cottage-door, to the life-long gratification of the latter. This, however, was named to the writer as the father's work.

The son was apprenticed to the viewer of a colliery in the neighbourhood about 1819, and after spending two years in that occupation, he was in 1822 despatched to the University of Edinburgh for a session, during which he so far profited as to return with a prize for mathematics. He now spent a year or two in his father's locomotive manufactory at Newcastle, of which he was hereafter to become the principal. Having been sent out to report upon the gold and silver mines of Columbia and Venezuela, he passed two or three years in South America, and returned to England in 1827 or 1828, to find his father deeply engaged in preparing, and strenuously contending for, railways and locomotives. He devoted the ensuing four or five years to the improvement of locomotive-engines, which underwent great changes under his watchful superintendence. He made experiments upon the application of heat, the strength of cylindrical and other boilers, the best mode of riveting flat portions of the same, and established all his improvements upon the issue of such experiments. The Rocket and Planet engines were in a great measure the result of his researches, combined with those of his father, the Planet being the type of the present locomotive.

About this period (1830) he executed the Leicester and Swannington, Whitby and Pickering, and two other railways, and planned a large locomotive manufactory at Newton in Lancashire; but whilst these works were in progress, his father and others were engaged in the first survey of the great railway from London to Birmingham, and subsequently he himself was engaged upon it, and walked over the whole distance—it is said twenty times—in order to determine the best line. By the close of 1831 the requisite plans were deposited, preparatory to application for an act in the ensuing session of Parliament. The contest before committees was protracted and severe, and no less than £72,868 were expended in carrying the bill from first to last through Parliament. The difficulties which the Messrs Stephenson encountered in the actual construction of this important railway are generally known. Extensive tunnellings and excavations, besides long embankments, had to be executed by the best contractors of that day, who, however, were mostly new to works of this nature, while specifications for various peculiar kinds of work had to be prepared by the engineers. Opposition from Northampton necessitated the Kilsby tunnel, which penetrated 160 feet below the surface for a length of 2400 yards. This tunnelling was let to a contractor for £90,000, and appeared feasible, and free from great impediments; but it was found that at 200 yards from the south end a hidden water-bearing quicksand, overlaid by a thick bed of clay, extended 400 yards into the proposed tunnel. Eminent engineers despaired of success; but Mr R. Stephenson devised means by which the tunnel was ultimately completed in thirty months from the time of laying the first brick (of which 36,000,000 in all were used). During eight months no less than 1800 gallons of water per minute were raised and carried away by steam-engines from the quicksand; in all, 13 steam-engines, 1250 men, and 200 horses, were engaged in this task, and the total cost of the tunnel amounted to about £350,000.

In the course of this line enormous sums were paid for land and compensation; in one instance, £3000 was given for a piece of land, and £10,000 for consequential damages, though in the end the land was greatly enhanced in value by the railway. From this and similar causes, the original estimates which Mr R. Stephenson had laid before Parliament, amounting to £2,750,000, were so largely increased that the expenditure had equalled nearly £5,000,000 before the railway was opened for traffic. During nearly five years had Mr Stephenson, as engineer-in-chief, borne the heavy responsibilities and anxieties of this great undertaking; and it was indeed a day on which he might well feel honourable pride, when, with a small party (of whom the writer was one), he travelled by the first locomotive that had traversed at one and the same time the entire line of 112 miles.

His fame as a railway engineer was now at its culminating point, and he was henceforward fully occupied for several years in devising and superintending the construction of other lines. Of these the principal were the Midland, Blackwall, Northern and Eastern, Norfolk and Chester, and Holyhead, not to name numerous branch lines. Abroad, too, his services were sought either as consulting or constructing engineer; and thus he took part in the system of Belgian and Italian railways, and was employed on some of the principal lines in France, Holland, Norway, Denmark, Canada, New Zealand, Egypt, and India. In connection with the English lines he gave much parliamentary evidence, and was concerned in several hotly-contested questions, such as the "battle of the gauges," as well as in numerous reports, arbitrations, and consultations.

As a railway engineer, his attention had been necessarily much directed to bridges, and several of those now standing on various lines attest the skill and taste of the engineer-in-chief and of his able assistants. He was thus led to consider the possibility of adapting malleable iron to a larger extent in bridges, and for far wider spans than had hitherto been attempted. His own article, Iron Bridges, contributed to this Encyclopedia, contains his mature views on this subject, as well as the details of the principal erections of this character, with illustrations. We shall, therefore, content ourselves here with saying, that his own skill in this department is exhibited in some of the greatest constructions in iron-bridge building now existing. Not to dwell upon the High-level Bridge at Newcastle and some others, we particularly refer to the Conway and Britannia Tubular-Bridges in North Wales. The latter is, indeed, celebrated through all countries, and is an object of wonder to foreigners. Its principle was a subject of profound study and frequent experiments by Mr Stephenson and his very able assistants. It must be mentioned that Mr Fairbairn claims the merit of being the originator of the tubular principle; but into the controversy on this question we are not called upon to enter, nor is this the place to pronounce upon the respective claims of either of these two eminent engineers. The bridge itself is a marvel of massiveness, design, and perseverance. Unsightly in some aspects, it is nevertheless grand as a whole. The weight of malleable-iron in it is no less than 9480 tons, and that of cast-iron 1988 tons. The length of the long tubes (in place) is 488 feet, 8 inches; their height above low-water (the Menai Straits) is 121 feet, 6 inches; above high-water, 100 feet; and the weight of each tube is 1803 tons. By this erection the value of the tubular principle is demonstrated, and the ability of all concerned established.

A bridge was commenced and built, under the direction of Mr Stephenson, across the St Lawrence, extending nearly two miles, and is now opened in connection with the Grand Trunk Canadian Railway. Unprecedented difficulties had to be overcome in founding the piers of this bridge in the rapid waters of the river, and it was necessary to sink the foundations below its bed, thereby reaching to a great depth, while operations could only be carried on during a period of the year. Grandeur of conception and successful execution are here combined in the most remarkable degree. In these respects, and in magnitude, it may be regarded as the engineer's greatest work in iron-bridge building.

It will be unnecessary to refer to minor labours and triumphs, but it should be recorded that in all his public works Mr Stephenson had the good fortune to be ably seconded by his subordinates, in selecting whom he displayed considerable judgment. Some of these may remain unknown, but others are in the front rank of the profession of their former chief.

In public life Mr Stephenson became further known (in 1814) as M.P. for Whitby, and as a respected speaker in the House of Commons upon his own subjects. In private life no man could be more honoured, loved, and happy. Great wealth, and numerous and attached friends, were his fortunate lot. He died 12th October 1859, aged 56 years. His remains were honoured with a public funeral and in-