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He spoke in the strong Northumbrian dialect of his district, and described himself as ‘only the engine-wright at Killingworth; that’s what he was.’“ Mr. Pease soon saw that our engineer was the very man for his purpose. The whole plans of the railway were still in an undetermined state, and Mr. Pease was therefore glad to have the opportunity of profiting by Stephenson’s experience.
George himself put into the concern his precious 1000 pounds, not one penny of which he had yet touched; while Pease and a friend advanced as much between them. A factory was forthwith started at Newcastle on a small scale, and the hardworking engine-wright found himself now fully advanced to the commercial dignity of Stephenson and Co.
He immediately set about ascertaining the cause of the defect; and finding it to be occasioned by excessive friction, he proceeded, with the sanction of the head engine-wright and the colliery owners, to shift the pulley-wheels and re-arrange the gearing, which had the effect of greatly diminishing the tear and wear, besides allowing the work of the colliery to proceed without interruption.
Paris, in his ‘Life of Sir Humphry Davy,’ thus wrote:—“It will hereafter be scarcely believed that an invention so eminently scientific, and which could never have been derived but from the sterling treasury of science, should have been claimed on behalf of an engine-wright of Killingworth, of the name of Stephenson—a person not even possessing a knowledge of the elements of chemistry.”
Cunningham of Lainshaw, near Irvine in Ayrshire; after which he was appointed engine-wright at Ayr, and subsequently at the Govan Coal Works near Glasgow, where he remained until his death.
His friends thought it a monstrous idea that his splendid life-saving apparatus should have been independently devised by "an engine-wright of Killingworth of the name of Stephenson a person not even possessing a knowledge of the elements of chemistry."
In the following year, at the age of sixteen, he was articled as an engineer for five years to the owners of Percy Main, and was placed under the charge of Mr. Robinson, the engine-wright of the colliery.
This sounds very odd reading at the present day, when the engine-wright of the name of Stephenson has altered the whole face of the world, while Davy is chiefly remembered as a meritorious and able chemist; but at the time, Stephenson's claim to the invention met with little courtesy from the great public of London, where a meeting was held on purpose to denounce his right to the credit of the invention.
By the improvements he had made in the engine, he might almost be said to have invented it; but no one—not even the philosophers—detected the significance of that wonderful machine. What railways were to become, rested in a great measure with that “engine-wright of Killingworth, of the name of Stephenson,” though he was scarcely known as yet beyond the bounds of his own district.
Dodds kept him in mind for the future, too; and a couple of years later, on a vacancy occurring, he promoted the promising hand to be engine-wright of all the collieries under his management, at a salary of 100 pounds a year. When a man's income comes to be reckoned by the year, rather than by the week or month, it is a sign that he is growing into a person of importance.
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