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STE that discovery, Blackett, the owner of that colliery, caused a locomotive engine to be made for running on a tram-road; being a railway in which the wheels are without flanges, and are guided by ledges on the rails. Soon afterwards the proprietors of Killingworth colliery commissioned their engine-wright, George Stephenson, to make a locomotive. It was completed and tried on the 25th of July, 1814, and was the first engine in which smooth wheels were made to run upon edge-rails. The performance, though satisfactory on the whole, and at least equal to that of previous locomotive engines, was found not to be cheaper than that of horse power. Stephenson, having well considered the means of obtaining a better result, devised and carried out, towards the end of the same year, his great invention of the blastpipe, whereby the rate of combustion of the fuel, the original source of the power of the engine, is made to adjust itself to the work which the engine has to perform, and is made capable, when required, of being increased to many times the rate at which fuel is burned in the furnace of a stationary engine of the same size; and in making that invention he took the step which led to the subsequent immense development of the power and speed of locomotives. In a second locomotive (for which he took a patent in 1815, jointly with Ralph Dodds, then viewer of Killingworth colliery), he introduced many improvements in the details of the construction and mechanism; such as the direct action of the connecting-rods on the wheels and the coupling of the axles by means of rods and crank-pins, so as to dispense with the toothed gearing formerly employed, which had been a cause of waste of power and wear of material. Engines constructed upon that plan by Stephenson, in 1816, are in use at Killingworth to this day. In 1823, with the assistance of capital furnished by his friends, Edward Pease and Thomas Richardson, he founded his locomotive engine-factory at Newcastle, which was the first work of the kind ever established, and which still subsists on a greatly extended scale. The locomotive engine, in the state to which it had now been brought, excelled horse-power in economy; but it was only equal to ordinary horses in speed. In order to obtain the great speed at which locomotives now run, it was necessary to devise means of producing a greatly increased volume of steam, with a boiler of moderate bulk. This was accomplished by Stephenson, when in 1829 he combined with the blast-pipe the tubular boiler, which had been suggested to him by Booth; having been invented, independently and nearly at the same time, by Booth in England and by Séguin in France. On the 6th of October, 1829, occurred the famous competition of locomotive engines, when the prize offered by the directors of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was gained by George and Robert Stephenson's engine, the "Rocket," the parent of all the swift and powerful locomotives of the present day; and the eye of man beheld for the first time a machine running at the speed of a mile in two minutes. Up to that time, ten or twelve miles an hour had been looked upon as the utmost limit of conceivable velocity in travelling; and the general amazement at the performance of Stephenson's engine reached a pitch of which no description can convey an idea. The "Rocket," like everything made by Stephenson, continued long afterwards to be serviceable. It is recorded to have run, on one occasion, four miles in four minutes and a half; a speed scarcely exceeded by any engine of the present day. It is now preserved as a monument of inventive genius in the South Kensington museum. In compliance with a limitation of weight prescribed by the directors, the "Rocket" weighed less than four tons and a half, and its tractive power was proportionately limited. George Stephenson and his son Robert soon proceeded to carry out the same principles of construction and action in heavier and more powerful engines, and were followed by various other engineers. The ordinary weights of locomotive engines now range from twenty to thirty tons; and for special purposes engines are used weighing forty tons, or even fifty tons, and upwards. In the course of the autumn of 1815, the invaluable invention of the miner's safety-lamp was made independently and simultaneously by George Stephenson and Sir Humphrey Davy. Davy deduced his invention from his scientific knowledge of the laws of combustion and the properties of flame, Stephenson, without the aid of that knowledge, arrived at an invention identical in principle, though somewhat different in detail, purely by a series of trials made at great personal risk. Both lamps depend on the principle that coal-gas requires a white heat for its ignition; in consequence of which flame cannot be communicated through narrow metallic passages so long as the metal is kept below a white heat. In the "Davy lamp" the flame is inclosed within a chimney of wire gauze; in the "Geordy lamp" (as that of Stephenson is called by the miners) the flame is inclosed in a glass chimney, while the fresh air is supplied and the burnt gases discharged through two sets of narrow tubes, at the top and bottom of the lamp respectively. A fierce dispute was carried on for some time as to the originality of those inventions, but with very little reason, for both were unquestionably original. The advantage of temper during the controversy was on Stephenson's side; he and his friends having always admitted Davy's claims as a scientific discoverer and independent inventor. In consequence of the presentation in 1816 of a testimonial to Davy, a similar testimonial was raised by subscription for Stephenson in 1817. The subscription amounted to £1000. Soon after the completion of his second locomotive, Stephenson began to turn his attention to the improvement of the railways, upon the smoothness and firmness of which the efficiency of the locomotive to a great extent depends. He invented an improved joint and chair, which (along with Mr. Loch) he patented in 1816. In 1818 he made, along with Mr. Nicholas Wood, the eminent mining engineer, then colliery-viewer at Killingworth, a series of important experiments on the resistance to the motion of carriages on railways. In 1819 he undertook his first piece of business as a "civil engineer," in the customary acceptation of the term—the planning and execution of the Hetton railway, in which he was assisted by his younger brother Robert. That line was opened in 1822. In 1817 the first public railway ever made, the Stockton and Darlington railway, was projected by Edward Pease, with the co-operation of some other capitalists of the district; and after a hard struggle, an act of parliament for its construction was obtained in 1821. The original intention of the promoters of that line had been to work it by horse-power; but Stephenson, having been introduced to Pease by Mr. Nicholas Wood, so convinced him and the other directors of the advantages of steam-power, that they resolved to intrust Stephenson with the execution of their railway, and to obtain authority to use locomotives. A new act for that purpose was obtained in 1823. The Stockton and Darlington Railway was opened on the 27th of September, 1825. Besides being the first public railway, it was the first railway on which passengers were carried. It is on record, that shortly before its completion, Stephenson foretold that the time would come, "when mail-coaches would go by railway, and railways would be the great highway for the king and his subjects; when it would be cheaper for a working man to travel by railway than to walk on foot;" a prophecy which he lived to see accomplished. The speed at first adopted on the Stockton and Darlington railway did not exceed that of conveyance by horse-power; but in this respect a new era was at hand. About 1821 a railway between Liverpool and Manchester was projected by Mr. Sandars, Mr. Moss, and others of the leading capitalists of those cities. The first survey was made by Mr. William James, but was very imperfect, owing to interruptions by the landowners and population of the district. The promoters, having in view the use of locomotive engines, sent James to Killingworth to observe their performance there. His report was favourable; and that circumstance led to the employment of Robert Stephenson to assist him in a second survey. This too proved a failure, like the first, and from similar causes. In 1824 George Stephenson was appointed engineer-in-chief of the undertaking, and a third survey was proceeded with, but was rendered very imperfect by obstacles similar to those of the first and second. The scheme was brought before parliament in 1825; it met with the most determined opposition from landowners and canal companies; Stephenson's proposal for working the line by locomotives, at speeds not exceeding ten miles an hour or thereabouts, though based on long experience, was denounced by various engineers as visionary; and though the preamble was carried, the clauses empowering the company to buy land and make the railway were thrown out in committee, and the scheme was thus defeated. The promoters now engaged Messrs. George and John Rennie to make a fourth survey, which was accomplished by those engineers, with the assistance of Mr. Charles Vignoles. The course of the line was altered, so as to be as little obnoxious as possible to the landowners. The capital was found to be too small; but the deficiency was made up by the marquis of Stafford (afterwards duke of Sutherland), who, as the result proved, acted on that occasion with sagacity, as well as with liberality. The