George Stephenson, Father of Railways

George Stephenson started life in extremely humble circumstances, but his ingenuity and pursuit of education led him to an impressive legacy. He invented a miner’s lamp, but is most well known for his work on locomotives and railways.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 2:14Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:25Holly Frey?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey. And I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So today's topic has come up on the show before. He came up recently, very briefly, in our self-help books episode. He also came up in our two-parter on Sir Humphrey Davy. He was one of the people who also invented a miner's safety lamp, got involved in a rather heated argument over who did it first. But he is most well-known for his work on locomotives and railways. He's often called the father of railways, and that is George Stevenson, and we are going to talk about him today. George Stephenson was born on June 9, 1781, in Wyleham, England, which is in

• 3:05Holly Frey?

  the county of Northumberland. His parents, Robert and Mabel Carr Stevenson, were quite poor. Robert worked as a fireman at the Wyleham Colliery. This was one of several jobs working in coal that he had in his life, and that is because coal pits would be opened up very quickly, mined to exhaustion and then closed. So people had to follow the trail of new mine openings to make a living. That meant consequently, working in coal was a nomadic life. George was the second of six children, and when he was born, the Stevenson's were living with three other families in a small cottage that was less than two yards from a wooden railway that was used for horse-drawn carts carrying

• 3:51Holly Frey?

  coal from the mines. And George followed in his father's footsteps. He did not go to school, and he started working when he was a child of eight. This was really quite normal for children in coal-mining villages. Neither of George's parents could read or write, and they also had started working when they were just kids. George's first job was watching a neighbor's cows and horses and helping in the garden, but he started colliery work not much later. He started out as a picker, meaning he picked things like metal and slate out of the coal. He then moved on to a job driving one of the horses that pulled mine carts, but eventually he moved up again and made his way to become his father's assistant.

• 4:33Holly Frey?

  George grew up around early steam-powered technology, but from the blue-collar side of it. His father operated a Newcomen atmospheric steam engine at the local colliery.

• 4:46Holly Frey?

  This was an engine developed by preacher and inventor Thomas Newcomen in 1712. It was designed to pump water out of mines. The water that was pumped out by the engine would then be routed to water wheels to provide power for other equipment. Stevenson became a Newcomen operator when he was still a teenager. George's siblings also went to work when they were still children and all of the boys worked at the colliery. Yeah, his sisters did domestic work. But George was also really interested in the world and he was curious by nature. He was absolutely fascinated by anything mechanical and he loved to take things apart and then put them back together.

• 5:28Holly Frey?

  So, working in the mines meant that he had a lot of equipment around that he could examine and sometimes work on. He would also create models of engines out of clay. But he also loved animals. When he was a boy tending cows, he liked to search for birds' nests as he went about his days and he really loved blackbirds in particular. He had as a boy a blackbird that became so accustomed to him that it became a pet and it slept at the head of his bed each night. He also kept rabbits that he caught. There are many stories of him throughout his life, making friends with wild animals and turning them into pets. As he was becoming an adult, he decided to go after the education he hadn't been able to get when he was younger.

• 6:12Holly Frey?

  He had gotten into his adolescence, still not knowing how to read or write, but he knew if he wanted to know more about the world, he needed to learn. He started taking classes at night after his full day shifts at the mines. One of his motivations, according to the biography written by Samuel Smiles in 1857, was that because George and the other men at the colliery knew about Napoleon's movements in Europe, they wanted more details, but nobody could read the newspaper. He also wanted to learn more about keeping animals. For all of these things, he was going to need to learn how to read. And then in addition to matters of personal interest, he knew that if he wanted to advance

• 6:55Holly Frey?

  in his career, that reading was a necessity. To be clear with this, he started at the very beginning. In his earliest lessons, he had to learn the alphabet because he had never been taught even that. He was 19 when he learned to write his name for the first time. Once he mastered reading, George also started taking lessons in arithmetic. This early education set him on a path of lifelong learning. He continued to study various subjects all through his life, often on his own in the evenings after work. Yeah, it sounds, based on descriptions, like he wasn't just casually like, oh, I think I'm going to read this book next.

• 7:34Holly Frey?

  Like, he was kind of putting together little curricula for himself and being like, this month, I'm going to study this. This month, I'm going to learn about this, which is quite admirable. George met a woman named Frances Anderson during this time in his life. She was working as a domestic servant in the farmer's home where George had moved when his job took him away from his family home. He and Frances, who went by Fanny, got married in November 1802. Frances was older than him. I read differing numbers, some that said she was nine years older, some that said she was 12, but roughly a decade. He had actually wooed her sister Anne unsuccessfully before he and Frances struck up a courtship.

• 8:19Holly Frey?

  And this was, by all accounts, though, a very good match, and the pair had a very loving marriage. They seemed to be what everybody hopes for, best friends. And they always chose each other's company in the evenings and in their spare time over other options of places they could be. Knowing that he needed to support a family, Stevenson sought to expand his income by diversifying his revenue streams, meaning he learned a lot of skills. He had already learned shoe repair before he met Fanny. He had actually resold a pair of her shoes while they were courting. And soon, he also added clock repair to his repertoire. He also, at least according to some accounts, started cutting out clothing for the wives of his coworkers so they could get right to sewing it up.

• 9:04Holly Frey?

  So he had his hands in a lot of activities. Just before the wedding, George started working as a brakesman at Willington Colliery. That came with a significant pay bump. A brakesman operates the winch at the top of the pit that brings the coal up out of a mine. This position was considered to be skilled labor, and so that's why it came with a pay increase. He also continued to take side jobs. At one point, he was so busy hauling cargo out of the holds of ships that he cut back his engine operator hours and his friend William Fairbain took this dropped hours from him. This extra income had good timing since George and Francis had a son 11 months after they got married.

• 9:48Holly Frey?

  That was on October 16th, 1803. They named their son Robert. George really adored Robert and Robert would become an important collaborator with George as an adult. Less than a year after Robert's birth, the Stephens moved again, this time to Killingworth for another Brakesman position. Uh, coming up, we're going to get to a point in George's biography where his life takes some sad turns. So we're going to pause before we get into that and hear from our sponsors.

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• 10:53Holly Frey?

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• 12:30Holly Frey?

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• 14:07Holly Frey?

  In the summer of 1805, Francis and George had another baby, a daughter. But the infant died when she was still a baby. Although accounts of her age at death vary quite a bit. Some say that she died after just a few weeks, others a few months. But Francis also became ill, and she died of tuberculosis in 1806. So now George had to raise their son alone. And initially, he hired a housekeeper to look after young Robert. And that was because he had been offered a lucrative temporary job in Montrose, Scotland. He may have also just needed some time away from his regular life to deal with his grief, which was considerable. George made this journey to Scotland on foot. And I looked it up on Google Maps.

• 14:52Holly Frey?

  And according to that, that would have been about 68 hours worth of walking one way. When he returned, he learned that his housekeeper had married his younger brother. That honestly was great, but it meant that he did need a new housekeeper to help take care of his son. That job was eventually filled by his sister Eleanor. The Stevenson family had a couple of financial and health hardships around this time. George's father, Robert, had been badly injured in a work accident and suffered steam burns and the loss of his vision. George saw to it that his father's debts were paid and that he was set up with everything he needed and also arranged to take care of all of the older Robert's expenses for the rest of his life.

• 15:37Holly Frey?

  This, of course, significantly depleted the money he had saved up. Yeah, he had returned from Scotland with a good bit of money, and more than two thirds of it was immediately used for this effort. Meanwhile, the Napoleonic Wars had led to Britain expanding their militia, and George was selected for conscription. He did have the option to pay for a substitute to serve in his stead, and he took that option because he wanted to stay near his family, particularly his son. And this was something a lot of wealthy families did as a matter of course, but George wasn't wealthy. He went broke doing this. And while he did feel like it was the right decision to stay with Robert, both Roberts, really, he was also incredibly depressed to find himself with nothing

• 16:22Holly Frey?

  after years of working really hard and moving up the ladder in the Collieries and being really frugal and careful with his money. He went right back to a brakesman job to keep himself, his son, and his father afloat. He took a temporary job in 1808 at the Westmore Pit along with two other brakesmen. The terms of their contract gave the three brakesmen their pay based on how many loads they could pull in. So Stevenson wanted to find ways they could increase their productivity and all make more money from the job. So the first thing he did was watch the equipment and noted anything that stood out. And right away, he noticed that the ropes on the winding machine wore out much more quickly at the Westmore Pit than on average.

• 17:08Holly Frey?

  So he deduced that they were probably encountering more friction than was normal. He got permission to make some changes to the pulley system on the winch, and this led to an immediate improvement in the system. He got in the habit of taking the machinery he was in charge of apart on Saturdays at the end of every work week. Then he would clean it and reassemble it. And as a consequence, that machine stayed in tip top shape all of the time. And Stevenson became an expert at every inner working. In 1910, a new pit was opened at Killingworth. This was known as the High Pit. And it had a new come in engine to pump the water out of the mine shaft. But that engine was problematic.

• 17:51Holly Frey?

  It never succeeded in clearing the water from the pit, no matter how hard its operators tried. So if the water couldn't come out of the pit, they couldn't go down and mine it. George, who was back at Killingworth as a brakesman at this point, would often stop by the pit and watch this new come in try and fail to pump. And he had actually told some of the mine managers when he saw this engine installed that he thought it was defective. But he was also just a brakesman, so his counsel was not really considered in the decisions of the mechanics. He also told one of the shaft sinkers, those are the people that drill down and create the shafts, that he thought he could probably fix that machine.

• 18:31Holly Frey?

  After weeks of no progress with that engine, the sinker mentioned to his boss that George Stephenson thought that he had a solution. And after that information ran up the chain of command, it was decided that letting a brakesman try his hand at a repair couldn't make things anything worse. According to the Smiles biography, mining manager Ralph Dodds told George, quote, "I'll give you a fair trial and you must set to work immediately. We are clean drowned out and cannot get a step further. The engineers hereabouts are all bet. And if you really succeed in accomplishing what they cannot do, you may depend on it. I will make you a man for life." So George, as we've established, was very familiar with Newcomen Engines.

• 19:13Holly Frey?

  He had worked with them from the time he was a teenager. He had hands-on experience tinkering with them in those early jobs. He insisted that he had to pick the team of mechanics that he was going to work with. That caused some bruised egos. He also said his team needed to be of all one political affiliation. They either all needed to be Whigs or they all needed to be Tories to avoid unnecessary friction and bickering among them. Uh, Holly did not find out which party they kind of landed on. I'm kind of curious was, were George's affiliations just flexible? I feel like George was not terribly interested in politics. Okay.

• 19:57Holly Frey?

  He was interested in engines. Yeah, yeah. Once he had assembled his team, they took the entire engine apart piece by piece. And this was a huge machine, so it was a significant undertaking. Three days later, the whole thing was back together. And at first it did not seem like it was going to work any better than when it first started. But within two days, the water in the mine had been completely pumped out. Ralph Dodds made good on his promise. He gave Stevenson a gift of 10 pounds and then promoted him to the role of engine man at the High Pit. That came with a much higher salary than he had ever gotten before. His responsibilities and income grew even more the following year when the High Pit's

• 20:42Holly Frey?

  engine wright was killed in an accident and George inherited that job. Yeah, he kind of moved into the position of management over the other mechanics. Throughout all of his career accomplishments and promotions, George had sought out teachers to improve his knowledge, and he really wanted to improve his math skills. He would get arithmetic assignments from this friend of his, John Wiggum, who was very skilled at math, and he would work out problems during downtime at work or in the evenings, and then he would present them to John for correction. Wiggum also taught George how to draw plans and basic mechanical diagrams, and then the two men actually worked together from a book to learn the laws of mechanics, which

• 21:25Holly Frey?

  is the most charming, sweet thing I've ever heard. Over the years, George was also seeing to his son Robert's education, and when he had still been earning a pretty meager wage, he had made the decision that Robert would get an education. George later wrote, quote, "In the earlier period of my career, when Robert was a little boy, I saw how deficient I was in education, and I made up my mind that he should not labor under the same defect, but that I would put him in a good school and give him a liberal training. I was, however, a poor man, and how do you think I managed? I betook myself to mending my neighbors' clocks and watches at night after my daily labor was done, and thus I procured the means of educating my son."

• 22:10Holly Frey?

  In 1815, when Robert was 12, he started attending a day school in Newcastle. Yeah, in addition to all those side jobs, this increase in pay really, really helped make this plan come to fruition. This step in Robert's education also, though, offers another glimpse into the ways that George continually sought to expand his own knowledge. So Robert would go to school during the day, and then in the evenings, George would sit with Robert and review his homework. But this wasn't a case of his father helping exactly. George was taking the opportunity to follow along with Robert's studies so that he could learn the same mathematical concepts that his son was being taught.

• 22:52Holly Frey?

  George also gave his son assignments, like building a sundial for their cottage, so that he would learn to apply his knowledge to practical uses. And Robert, with the help of his father, did gain enough of an understanding of astronomy and math to make that sundial. They hung it outside their cottage, and George pointed it out to everyone who visited. He was very proud of it, and it moved to Robert's home later in life. One of George Stephenson's first big achievements as an inventor happened after he had visited another colliery to see their mobile steam boiler. This is a proto- locomotive invented by John Blankensop. Blankensop's wheeled steam boiler was intended to bring coal out of the mines, but that

• 23:37Holly Frey?

  was a big ask. It meant this machine had to be able to run on the rails that had been tracked into the mine, but there were concerns about it, that while it was powerful, it would never really have enough grip to pull itself and a load of coal. Blankensop came up with a solution, which was a ratchet wheel that had teeth that would set into a special track called a rack rail that had holes in it at intervals matching up with the wheel teeth. Blankensop's engine was really a marvel. It was natural for every engineer and mechanic in England to want to see it. And it was ingenious, but it also had problems. The rack rail tended to take a lot of strain. It needed a lot of repairs.

• 24:21Holly Frey?

  And the one that Stephenson had gone to look at had a boiler explosion not long after that. While the coal industry was very interested in the idea of a locomotive, they were also a bit wary of the whole field up to that point. Yeah, anytime there's a big disruptive change in technology, it's scary. Especially if it explodes. Horses worked just fine, and this one came with obvious danger. This was not Stephenson's first experience with the idea of a mobile steam engine. He had been thinking about these kinds of machines for a while because the coal industry was really the driving force behind their development and a lot of people had been talking about them.

• 25:05Holly Frey?

  Stephenson thought there had to be a way to make a mobile steam boiler that didn't have the issues of reliability that Blankensopps did, and he started thinking about how the problem with the cogs might be solved. He made a serious and methodical study of Blankensopps' engine and all of the other engine attempts that had been developed in the early 19th century, and he made a list of all of their shortcomings. And then he set out to create something that would transcend all of those problems. And when he went to the owners of the Killingworth Mines to tell them that he wanted to invent a locomotive, although that word didn't exist yet, they gave him the money to do it. To be clear, that word, of course, wasn't in use for railroad vehicles.

• 25:48Holly Frey?

  It existed as a word, but it was going to soon change. Stephenson initially called his project "A Travelling Engine." Over the course of several months, Stephenson and his crew worked to bring together the machine, and the result was the Blucher, which debuted on July 25, 1814. It is said to have been named after Gebhard Leberich von Blucher, who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813. Blucher outperformed the steam engines that inspired it. It was able to haul 30 tons of coal, distributed among eight wagons at a rate of four miles an hour. It was put into work right away at the Killingworth Colliery. But Stephenson was not entirely happy with the Blucher.

• 26:33Holly Frey?

  Some parts of the mechanic of it were kind of cramped. It would make them difficult to work on if there was need for repair, and it wasn't always the smoothest in terms of movement. It would sometimes make these jerky lurches forward as the various cylinders driving it fired one after another. Additionally, the important question of whether this machine was more efficient and cost-effective than carts pulled by horses was very much in doubt. Stephenson really looked at the Blucher as a first draft, and he really thought he could do better, so he kept working. The major revision he made to the design was the steam blast. This is the process of redirecting exhaust steam up the engine's chimney. The fuel for the engine was coal.

• 27:18Holly Frey?

  Burning coal heated the water in the boiler and that created the steam that drove the pistons inside the cylinders, which turned the wheels. Prior to redirecting it, the steam had run through the engine's cylinders. In the words of biographer Smiles, quote, "Was at first allowed to escape into the open atmosphere with a hissing blast to the terror of horses and cattle." In watching the Blucher and analyzing its performance, Stevenson noticed how much more power this steam blast had than the smoke that left the chimney that vented off of the fire that heated the boiler. But Stevenson suspected correctly that if he could run that steam into the chimney through a pipe, then the air that was pulled in after it would increase the draft.

• 28:04Holly Frey?

  That would significantly increase the intensity of the combustion in the furnace, kind of like a bellows would at a forge. It would create more energy. After initially testing this idea on the Blucher, Stephenson started working on a second engine with the steam blast incorporated into the design from the start. And he patented this new design on February 28, 1815. The next several years were prolific for Stevenson as an inventor. He built an estimated 16 locomotives at Killingworth. One of these locomotives, the Killingworth Billy, which Stevenson built in 1816, is in the collection of the Stevenson Steam Railway Museum.

• 28:46Holly Frey?

  It is the oldest surviving locomotive built by Stevenson. And this is in part because he would often take apart earlier models to make new ones. So there are not a lot of survivors among those reported 16. Witnessing a number of horrific mining accidents in which workers were injured and killed, being very aware of the danger of fire damp, that's methane gas that becomes highly flammable when mixed with air, that all led Stevenson to think about ways to improve the safety in the tunnels. In one instance, he went right into a colliery mine that was on fire and asked for six brave men to follow him so they could douse the flames. He quickly worked with the volunteers to build a wall to seal off the main,

• 29:31Holly Frey?

  choking the fire out by depriving it of air. There were still several fatalities that day, but if George had not plunged into the pit with the idea to wall off this fire, a lot more people would have died. In 1815, George gave a demonstration of the first iteration of a safety lamp that he had devised to allow illumination of mining pits while preventing fires. His lamp, which involved a glass cylinder that was then encased in a tin sleeve, allowed air to enter only through small holes. It had a slide on the bottom that could be moved to, in his words, "regulate the quantity of air to be admitted." By the time the design was refined, it also had several of what he called "capillary tubes"

• 30:15Holly Frey?

  that released air through a series of apertures. A flame could not successfully make it through these tubes. Stephenson's lamp design, nicknamed "The Geordie", was soon in regular use at Killingworth and other mines in northern England. Of course, soon after that, Sir Humphry Davy revealed his own safety lamp, and soon a battle was being waged over who had invented it first. The supporters of each man became locked in a passionate debate about who should get this accolade. Stephenson's working-class upbringing worked against him in scientific circles. A lot of the era of the gentleman scientist, a lot of them had lots of extra money lying around. It seemed impossible that a coyery worker,

• 30:59Holly Frey?

  and yes, even one who had engineered these huge step-forward and locomotive engines, could be an inventor on the same level of the renowned chemist and inventor Sir Humphry Davy. Davy was given a 2,000-pound award by the coal owners of England. They gave Stephenson a mere 100 guineas as kind of a consolation prize. Stephenson was insulted, and his friends and supporters were furious and urged him to set that record straight. Yeah, he apparently, you know, spoke very much with an accent. He did not sound like a refined gentleman from London, and that really hurt him when he spoke about this invention, even though he actually...

• 31:41Holly Frey?

  Was first. That urging of his friends resulted in a letter which was published in the papers, and then it was also published later as part of a collection of many correspondences and documents on the matter. In George's open letter, which was dictated to his son, he opened with, quote, "Several of my friends having expressed a wish that I would lay an engraved plan of my safety lamp before the public. With as correct an account of the dates of that invention as I am able, I have resolved to do so." And he included in this, his designs was kind of a little pamphlet. He notated the date of October 21, 1815, as the first time he tested his lamp in the mine, which was

• 32:22Holly Frey?

  successful with other tests following in the weeks directly after, showing that he was working on his lamp well before anyone knew of Davy's efforts. So he could not have copied him. Supporters in Northern England, through a committee led by the Earl of Strathmore, C. J. Brandling, collected money and awarded Stevenson one thousand pounds and a silver watch. He was given these at a formal dinner. If George was chagrined that he didn't get enough recognition for his lamp, he didn't really need to worry. He was about to embark on a series of projects that would really change the world. And we'll get to that after a sponsor break.

• 33:02Speaker 02

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• 33:31Speaker 04

  I'm Martha Stewart from the Martha Stewart Podcast. You know what I love about cooking? The endless inspiration, sharing exceptional flavors, and of course, the best ingredients. I refuse to make a dish without them.

• 33:46Speaker 04

  McCormick has been and is an essential in the kitchen. Now McCormick's new line of signature seasonings make bringing fresh inspiration and endless versatility to everyday dishes easier than ever. There's the everyday essential garlic and olive oil, the savory sweetness of caramelized onion, and globally inspired flavors like the herby with a touch of heat, chimichurri, and chili garlic that elevates everything from ramen to stir fry to even grilled meats. Try the chimichurri blend to make your steaks delicious. Each signature seasoning is crafted by flavor experts to make every dish more delicious.

• 34:29Speaker 04

  When you want to make your best, it's got to be McCormick. Find your favorite at McCormick.com.

• 34:36Holly Frey?

  We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

• 35:19Holly Frey?

  Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 35:40Holly Frey?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jesay have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So, listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends,

• 36:23Holly Frey?

  proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 36:45Holly Frey?

  As the hubbub over the lamp debate died down, Stevenson turned his focus to the roads and railways used for coal transport. This was a time when none of these things were standardized, and rail tracks were run right on the roads as a matter of course. You can still sometimes find roads that also have rail tracks embedded in them, but this was the only way you could find a rail at this point. Mines tended to put together their own rails to carry coal out, and these were often bumpy and they caused needless wear and tear on the engines and cars because the rails would shift and cause bouncing. None of them were really purpose designed. Those rails were also often made of cast iron. That meant that they were brittle, so that too needed to be considered.

• 37:28Holly Frey?

  Stevenson worked to redesign the way that tracks were laid so that they were smoother and less likely to break, and he redesigned the wheels of locomotives so that they worked better on these newly designed tracks. He also redesigned the pistons and cylinders in the engines so that they doubled his springs, which reduced the jerking and bouncing of the engine when it did encounter bumps. In 1820, Stevenson got married for a second time to a woman named Elizabeth Hindmarsh. Betty, as she was called, was the farmer's daughter. Betty's brother had introduced the two of them a little more than a year before. There's not a lot of information about Betty, but the two of them seemed to have been very happy together.

• 38:09Holly Frey?

  That same year that he got married, 1820, he was hired to build a brand-new railway, which needed to be eight miles long. This was for the Hetton Colliery, and the project took two years. The new line opened on November 18, 1822, and it was the first railway intended exclusively for use by engines and not animal-drawn carts, although some carts probably ran on it. George had sort of invented an entirely new career in this move. He was a builder of railroads. The next big railway project to come George Stephenson's way was the Stockton and Darlington Railway. Stevenson did the survey work to lay out the path of the railway

• 38:51Holly Frey?

  himself with several assistants. This project was to be 25 miles long, so the survey work took some time. Construction started in 1823, and Stevenson's newly-formed company, Stevenson and Company, was contracted to build three steam engines for it. By this point, his son, Robert, was working with him. One evening, over a bottle of wine, Stevenson reportedly told his son and another man named John Dixon, quote, "I venture to tell you that I think 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 highway for the king and all his subjects. The time is coming when it will

• 39:36Holly Frey?

  be cheaper for a working man to travel upon a railway than to walk on foot." I know there are great and almost insurmountable difficulties to be encountered, but what I have said will come to pass as sure as you live. I only wish I may live to see the day, though that I can scarcely hope for, as I know how slow all human progress is and with what difficulty I have been able to get the locomotive thus far adopted, notwithstanding my more than 10 years successful experiment at Killingworth. Yeah, he knew. He knew these were going to become important. The Stockton and Darlington Line opened on September 27, 1825, with an engine named Locomotion pulling a passenger car called Experiment.

• 40:21Holly Frey?

  Stevenson drove the Locomotion himself, and the people riding aboard Experiment were the first passengers to be conveyed by a steam locomotive. At times, it moved as quickly as 12 miles per hour. That seemed a dizzying speed at the time, although often it moved at a much slower pace of 4 to 6 miles per hour. This railway was a huge success, although the Experiment passenger coach ended up being run by a contractor company, and it was often drawn by a horse rather than a steam engine. And while initially this line was open for use by anyone who had a horse-drawn wagon, it was sort of like a public street, that policy was eventually rolled back because it caused problems

• 41:03Holly Frey?

  as more and more loads were running on the line via steam engine. Way too dangerous for horses to be involved. In 1826, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Act was passed in Parliament after several years of preparations and surveying. This funded construction of the first ever intercity railway. George Stephenson had been on the project since the summer of 1824 as principal engineer. He picked up the work of a surveyor named William James, who had conducted earlier analysis of the land and determined a path for the railway. But by the time Stevenson was brought on, William James was in debtor's prison. Stevenson attempted to perform a new survey with some changes to the route,

• 41:46Holly Frey?

  but he ran into trouble with landowners who did not want him or a railway on their property. These were not people angrily shaking fists. They were making serious threats and brandishing guns. So he ended up turning in a revised version of James's work, and that was a mistake. James had been sloppy. He was a little bit, it sounds like, of a flim flam man. There were errors in his survey, and it was just not an accurate representation of the land that the line was supposed to pass through. And that meant that the cost estimate that Stevenson had prepared based on the survey was also deeply flawed. He had underestimated its total cost by about 150,000 pounds.

• 42:31Holly Frey?

  He was questioned about it all before the House of Commons, and it became apparent he didn't really know what was going on with that planned route. He was fired and replaced by brothers George and John Rennie. And after they ran into problems with the board of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Company, they were booted and Stevenson was back on the project, although there were ongoing internal struggles. The surveyor that had been brought on when the Rennies were hired, Charles Blacker-Vignol, quit because he and Stevenson did just not get along. This was all such a huge and high stakes undertaking. It is kind of understandable that tensions would run high and people might clash, but it eventually shook out.

• 43:14Holly Frey?

  This was a large enough project that Stevenson divided it into thirds and assigned a construction superintendent to each 10-mile section. Those were Joseph Locke, William Alcard, and John Dixon. Stevenson moved to Liverpool for the construction of the line, and the work began. One of the most challenging segments and an area that had been much discussed during the hearings on the survey was a bog known as Chat Moss. The initial plan was that the bog would be drained, but that turned out to be impossible. Stephenson came up with the idea to float the railway on the bog after embankments had been shored up with dry moss. It took a lot longer than expected and Stephenson

• 43:59Holly Frey?

  was urged to abandon this whole plan numerous times, but he carried on, employing hundreds of men to haul materials to dump into the bog. And so this has finally worked. The floating railway worked and was often noted as being the smoothest part of the line. This was not the only instance where the railway had to cross less than ideal land to complete its course and there were 64 bridges and viaducts built for the project. Yeah, that Chatmoss Bridge is still there. Stephenson had made the shift away from cast iron for the rails and wrought iron was used for the line. This was much more reliable. It was smoother than cast iron and that was because it could be laid

• 44:43Holly Frey?

  in much longer lengths. He also established the gauge, the distance between rails at four feet, eight and a half inches. That's 1,435 millimeters. There are a number of different stories as to why that was the measurement. Some of them are quite fanciful and delightful. As we mentioned earlier, railways and roads had not been standardized. Mining rails could be anywhere from four to five feet wide. The most popular version of the story is that it was pretty standard for wagon wheels to be set at that width, like they would fall inside the rails. So if you were sharing the road with a train, both vehicles could work on it. That was what Stephenson had used at Killingsworth

• 45:26Holly Frey?

  Colliery and he continued to use it after that. And this number eventually became known as the Stephenson Gauge and it was adopted as a standard gauge in the UK Gauge Act of 1846. It's also standard for the most part around the world. I think I read a statistic that 55% of railways still use it. As the railway was under construction, another matter of debate arose, which was, who would build the locomotives for it? Would it actually use steam locomotives? There had been a push for the use of fixed engines along the length of the line that would power winched cables that would attach to the various vehicles and propel them forward.

• 46:08Holly Frey?

  Stevenson lobbied against this idea with just a lot of fervor, and of course, Stevenson wanted to be the one to build the locomotives for the line. There were other contenders, though, and a contest was announced with a 500-pound prize to see who could build the best locomotive. This was also a test to see if locomotive power really was the best way. As early work on the Liverpool and Manchester Rail was underway, George's favorite collaborator, his son Robert, was out of the country. Robert had been in South America since the summer of 1824, and that travel happened for two reasons. One, the silver and gold mines in South America were in desperate need of engineers.

• 46:51Holly Frey?

  And two, Robert had been ill for some time, possibly with tuberculosis, it gets mentioned, but it's unclear, and his doctor had suggested that he spend time in a warmer climate. So off he went. And when Robert returned to England in late 1827, he was immediately put to work on the design and construction of a new locomotive for this contest. Robert designed an engine known as Rocket in close collaboration with his father. At this point, Robert was working in their locomotive shop, and George was in Liverpool and continuing to work on the railway. The Rocket and the other competitors got to Liverpool for the Rainhill Trials in October of 1829.

• 47:34Holly Frey?

  There were five competitors total, including the Rocket, the Samperil, built by Timothy Hackworth, the Novelty, built by the engineering firm of Brathwaite and Ericson, the Perseverance from Timothy Burstall of Edinburgh, and the Cycloped, built by Thomas Brandreth.

• 47:52Holly Frey?

  The cycloped was immediately eliminated because it used horsepower, which was against the rules of the competition. But it really was no competition. None of the other engines could even finish and they had to withdraw. The rocket not only competed the trial, it hit 29 miles an hour at one point, and it handily whipped through the trials like pushing and pulling carts filled with stones. When the Liverpool and Manchester line opened on September 15th, 1830, Stevenson locomotives were the engines that ran it. Yeah, that one's kind of funny because a lot of people wrote in saying they were going to participate, but only this handful actually finished anything that they could bring. And there was another entry, I'm using air quotes because it was pulled by two guys.

• 48:37Holly Frey?

  It wasn't even horsepower. And they were like, no, no, no, no, no, don't even get on the track. From that moment, George Stephenson was so in demand that he had to constantly turn down jobs. He worked on multiple railway lines that slowly connected all of England's major municipalities. He also consulted and worked on many projects, both in Europe and North America. When the Institute of Mechanical Engineers was founded in 1847 in London, he was the group's first president. By that point, his second wife Betty had died and he was as retired as someone who seems dedicated to their work ever is. After he was widowed a second time, he became even more interested in things he had long

• 49:20Holly Frey?

  loved, like gardening and cultivating unusual flora. He invented a method to grow a perfectly straightened cucumber. He basically grew the fruit in a glass tube. So his retirement sounds kind of idyllic. On July 26th, 1848, he read a paper at a meeting of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers titled "On the Fallacies of the Rotary Engine." That was the last time he attended a meeting. Stevenson died on August 12th, 1848, after a bout of fever. In Chesterfield, where he lived at the end of his life, all the businesses closed on the day of the funeral, and there was a parade of railroad workers that followed his casket to Trinity Church, where he was buried.

• 50:04Holly Frey?

  Of course, his son went on to also do a lot of great things. Perhaps we will do an episode on Robert in the future. I don't know yet. There are memorials to George Stephenson all over the world in various places because he really did change the world, for better or worse. We think about the railroad barons in the US and maybe it feels like for worse, but progress. I have a cute listener mail that references my Ben Franklin plan. Oh, hooray. Our self-help episodes, and since he first came up in the self-help episode for me, not first, but recently, I thought it would be a good way to bookend it. This is from our listener Kelsey, who writes, hi, Holly and Tracy.

• 50:47Holly Frey?

  Happy New Year. I'm listening to you discuss your endless quest to get rid of stuff and not to accumulate more stuff while very slowly unpacking from my trip home for Christmas. I am very lucky to have such generous friends and family, but the prospect of finding places for the new stuff and needing to pare down the old stuff to make room is paralyzing? Baby, I feel you. I guess we share Ben Franklin's struggle with orderliness. I disagree with him that you're a more virtuous person if you're tidy, but sometimes it's nice if your life at least looks like it's in order. Thanks for the spookily timely inspiration to just try. We'll never be Marie Kondo, but I'm sure we can approach the orderliness we desire, if only for a little while, until we inevitably have to do a stuff purge again.

• 51:33Holly Frey?

  Thanks for making history interesting and relevant to our present lives. I hope 2026 treats you both well. Attached are pictures of my very good boy Scooter, who I adopted last summer. He's my second black cat, and from my own scientific research, I can confirm that black cats are the best. Kelsey, black cats are the best. There's a reason that black cats are delightful, and it's because of a recessive allele called the non-agutie allele in their genetics, which eliminates, it's actually a recessive gene, but it's very common. So don't let recessive confuse you. It eliminates the the striping that you would find in non-solid colored cats,

• 52:14Holly Frey?

  particularly dark colored cats, and it also is related to how dopamine receptivity happens in utero. So there is actually some science behind the idea that black cats tend to be really sweet in many ways. Our ones are really sweet. It's genetic. They're sweet.

• 52:35Holly Frey?

  And Scooter is cute as pie. He looks like he might get into some adorable trouble. There is one particular picture of him on his back in what I call baby harp seal position, because we have a cat that does that a lot. And he looks so sweet. And I just want to pet his little tummy. No. Uh, he's precious. I have no doubt. He is an angel and an absolute delight. Thank you so much for writing to us. If you would like to write to us and share your pet pictures, you don't have to have pet pictures. You can just write to us. You can send us pictures if you want, or not. Uh, you can do that at [email protected]. You can also find the show on the iHeartRadio app and subscribe there or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts.

• 53:24Holly Frey?

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 53:38Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You ever show up late to the game and your friends already saved your seat, your drink, even a plate? That's looking out. That's having your back. And that's exactly what AT&T does with the AT&T Guarantee. They know staying connected matters, so they

• 54:22Holly Frey?

  actually guarantee a network that comes through when it counts. AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they'll proactively make it right, just like that friend who takes care of things before you even ask. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details.

• 54:45Speaker 05

  Livrite, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book, writes John J. Miller of the Wall Street Journal. Author Hampton Sides proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.

• 55:12Holly Frey?

  Long hours, work deadlines, family commitments. You give so much to everyone else, isn't it time to invest in yourself? The University of Arizona Global Campus is built for working adults with flexible online degree programs designed to fit your life. Your previous education, training, and eligible experience may even help you earn college credit. At UAGC, you can take one accelerated course at a time, helping you move toward your goals in five- and six-week class formats. Visit uagc.edu today.

• 55:42Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.