Mechanics. With John Wigham, Stephenson
spent many leisure hours in study and
experiment; learning all John could teach, and
able to teach not a little out of his own
thoughts in exchange for the result of John's
reading. George Stephenson, at the age of
thirty-three had saved a hundred guineas;
and his son Robert, then taken from a village-
school, was sent to Brace's academy, at
Newcastle.

The father had built with his own hand
three rooms and an oven, in addition to the
one room and a garret up a step-ladder that
had been taken for his home at Killingworth.
He had a little garden, in which he devoted
part of his energy to the growth of monster
leeks and cabbages. In the garden was a
mechanical scarecrow of his own invention.
The garden door was fastened by a lock of
his contrivance, that none but himself could
open. The house was a curiosity-shop of
models and mechanical ideas. He amused
people with a lamp that would burn under
water, attached an alarum to the watchmen's
clock, and showed women how to make a
smoke-jack rock the baby's cradle. He was
full of a vigorous life. Kit Heppel one day
challenged him to leap from the top of one
high wall to the top of another, there being
a deep gap between; to his dismay he was
taken at his word instantly. Stephenson
cleared the eleven feet at a bound, exactly
measuring his distance.

As engine-wright, Stephenson had opportunities
of carrying still farther his study of the
engine, as well as of turning to account the
knowledge he already possessed. His ingenuity
soon caused a reduction of the number
of horses employed in the colliery from a
hundred to fifteen or sixteen; and he had
access not only to the mine at Killingworth,
but to all collieries belonging to Lord Ravensworth
and his partners, a firm that had been
named the Grand Allies. The locomotive
engine was then known to the world as a
new toy, curious and costly. Stephenson had
a perception of what might be done with it,
and was beginning to make it the subject of
his thoughts. From the education of his son
Robert, he was now deriving knowledge for
himself. The father entered him as a member
of the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical
Institution, and toiled with him over books
of science borrowed from its library.
Mechanical plans he read at sight, never
requiring to refer to the description; "a good
plan," he said, "should always explain
itself." One of the secretaries of the
Newcastle Institution watched with lively
interest the studies of both father and
son, and helped them freely to the use of
books and instruments, while he assisted
their endeavours with his counsels. George
Stephenson was thirty-two years old, and
however little he may by that time have
achieved, one sees that he had accumulated
in himself a store of power that would
inevitably carry him on—upon his own plan
of inch by inch advance—to new successes.
Various experiments had been made with the
new locomotive engines. One had been tried
upon the Wylam tram-road, which went
by the cottage in which Stephenson was
born. George Stephenson brooded upon the
subject, watched their failures, worked at the
theory of their construction, and made it his
business to see one. He felt his way to the
manufacture of a better engine, and proceeded
to bring the subject under the notice of the
lessees of the colliery. He had acquired
reputation not only as an ingenious but as a
safe and prudent man. He had instituted
already many improvements in the collieries.
Lord Ravensworth, the principal partner,
therefore authorised him to fulfil his wish;
and with the greatest difficulty making
workmen of some of the colliery hands, and,
having the colliery blacksmith for his head
assistant, he built his first locomotive in the
workshops at Westmoor, and called it "My
Lord." It was the first engine constructed
with smooth wheels; for Stephenson never
admitted the prevailing notion that
contrivances were necessary to secure adhesion.
"My Lord" was called "Blutcher" by
the people round about. It was first placed
on the Killingworth Railway on the twenty-
fifth of July, eighteen hundred and fourteen,
and, though a cumbrous machine, was the
most successful that had, up to that date,
been constructed.

At the end of a year it was found that the
work done by Blutcher cost about as much
as the same work would have cost if done by
horses. Then it occurred to Stephenson to
turn the steam-pipe into the chimney, and
carry the smoke up with the draught of a
steam-blast. That would add to the intensity
of the fire and to the rapidity with which
steam could be generated. The power of the
engine was, by this expedient, doubled.

At about the same time some frightful
accidents, caused by explosion in the pits of
his district, set Stephenson to exercise his
ingenuity for the discovery of a miner's safety
lamp. By a mechanical theory of his own,
tested by experiments made boldly at the peril
of his life, he arrived at the construction of a
lamp less simple, though perhaps safer, than
that of Sir Humphry Davy, and with the same
method of defence. The practical man and
the philosopher worked independently in the
same year on the same problem. Stephenson's
solution was arrived at a few weeks
earlier than Davy's, and upon this fact a great
controversy afterwards was founded. One
material result of it was, that Stephenson
eventually received as public testimonial a
thousand pounds, which he used later in life
as capital for the founding at Newcastle of
his famous locomotive factory. At the
Killingworth pits the "Geordy" safety lamp is
still in use, being there, of course, considered
to be better than the Davy.