Portal:North East England/Selected biography/January 2007
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George Stephenson (9 June 1781 – 12 August 1848) was an English mechanical engineer who designed the famous and historically important steam locomotive named Rocket and is known as the "Father of Railways".
Stephenson designed his first locomotive in 1814, a travelling engine designed for hauling coal on a coal site. Named Blücher, it could haul 30 tons of coal, and was the first successful flanged-wheel adhesion locomotive: its traction depended only on the contact between its flanged wheels and the rail. Over the next five years, he built 16 more engines. Stephenson was hired to build an 8-mile (13-km) railway from Hetton colliery to Sunderland in 1820. The finished result was the first railway to use no animal power at all.
In 1821, the project to build the Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR) began. Work began in 1822, and in September 1825 Stephenson completed the first locomotive for the new railway: originally named Active, it was soon renamed Locomotion. Driven by Stephenson, Locomotion hauled an 80-ton load of coal and flour nine miles (15 km) in two hours, reaching a speed of 24 miles per hour (39 km/h) on one stretch. The first purpose-built passenger car, dubbed Experiment, was attached, and carried dignitaries on the opening journey. It was the first time passenger traffic had been run on a steam locomotive railway.
His ingenuity also found other outlets. In 1815, he developed a miners' safety lamp, known as the Geordie lamp to distinguish it from the Davy lamp invented by Humphry Davy at much the same time.
