Many of the inventions which have done the most for mankind have been made by Americans, but we owe the locomotive to an Englishman. George Stephenson from early boyhood devoted himself to the study of engines and machinery. When but thirteen years of age he assisted his father in the care of an engine at a coal mine near Newcastle. Working by day as an engineman, and studying by night in a night school, he prepared himself for his future work. He won the confidence of his employers, especially that of Lord Ravensworth, who supplied him with funds to build a "traveling engine" to run on the rails of the tramroad between the mines and the shipping port, nine miles distant. July 25th, 1814, Stephenson made a successful trip with his locomotive, "My Lord," which pulled the coal cars at the rate of four miles an hour.
Stephenson felt that this locomotive was but a beginning. He told his friends that "there was no limit to the speed of such an engine, if the works could be made to stand." He was still pursuing his studies and experiments when he was appointed engineer of a proposed railroad between Stockton and Darlington. The directors of the road had planned to pull their cars by horses, but they were won over by Stephenson to agree to try an engine. Eleven years after the trial trip of his first engine, Stephenson was ready to exhibit a locomotive upon a railroad joining two towns for the purpose of transporting passengers and freight.
A short time before the trial trip, Stephenson made a prediction concerning the future of his invention. "I venture to tell you," he said, "that I think that you will live to see the day when railways will supersede almost all other methods of conveyance in this country--when mail coaches will go by railway, and railroads will become the great highways for the king and all his subjects. The time is coming when it will be cheaper for a working man to travel on a railway than to walk on foot. I know that there are great and almost insurmountable difficulties to be encountered, but what I have said will come to pass as sure as you now hear me."
The Stockton and Darlington Railway was three years in process of construction, and the day of its opening, September 27th, 1825, was an important one in the history of travel. Imagine that first train load--the locomotive, guided by Stephenson himself, six freight cars, a car carrying "distinguished guests," twenty-one coal cars crammed with passengers, and six more freight cars all loaded. Ahead of the train, or procession, as it might be called, rode a man on horseback, carrying a flag bearing the motto, "The private risk is the public benefit." When the train started, crowds of people ran along by its side, for a time easily keeping up with it. Finally, however, Stephenson called to the horseman to get out of the way and, putting on steam, drove the engine at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. The future of the locomotive was assured.