Lives of the Engineers (George and Robert Stephenson) by Samuel Smiles
George Stephenson did not invent the steam engine, that was due to Newcomen and later to James Watt. He did not invent the steam locomotive, that was due to a number of people including Cugnot, Trevithick and others. He did not invent the Railway. Railways or tramways had been in use for two hundred years before Stephenson.The reason why Stephenson was known as ‘The father of the steam locomotive’ was that he took a primitive, unreliable and wholly uneconomic device and turning it into an efficient machine not very different to those which ran until fifty or so years ago, married it with the iron rail and alone, and against considerable opposition,began, via the Stockton and Darlington Railway, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway and then the London and Birmingham Railway, the development of steam railways in England and the world.George Stephenson began life in 1781 in the worst and poorest of all circumstances, he did not learn to read until he was twenty years old, but he, together...
Episodes
Saturday Dec 23, 2023
Friday Dec 22, 2023
Thursday Dec 21, 2023
Wednesday Dec 20, 2023
Tuesday Dec 19, 2023
Monday Dec 18, 2023
Sunday Dec 17, 2023
Saturday Dec 16, 2023
Friday Dec 15, 2023
Thursday Dec 14, 2023