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Updated: July 14, 2025
In this first locomotive constructed at Killingworth, Stephenson to some extent followed the plan of Blenkinsop’s engine. The boiler was cylindrical, of wrought iron, 8 feet in length and 34 inches in diameter, with an internal flue-tube 20 inches wide passing through it.
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."
George Stephenson felt it bitterly, and gave way for a while to a natural despondency; he would hardly have been human if he had not; but still, he lived over it, and in the end worked on again with fuller resolution and vigour than ever. For several years Geordie, as his fellow-colliers affectionately called him, continued to live on at one or other of the Killingworth collieries.
Pease at length resolved upon paying a visit to Killingworth in the summer of 1822, to see with his own eyes the wonderful new power so much vaunted by the engineer. When Mr.
The good Quaker received him kindly, and listened to his arguments in favour of the locomotive. "Come over to Killingworth some day and see my engine at work," said Stephenson, confidently; "and if you do you will never think of horses again." Mr. Pease, with Quaker caution, came and looked.
He was a self-taught man, was born near Newcastle in 1781, began life as a pit-engine boy with wages at two-pence a day, and ultimately rose to fame and fortune as an engineer. In 1814 he made a locomotive for the Killingworth Colliery Railway. It drew thirty tons at the rate of four miles an hour, and was regarded as a great success.
Killingworth Colliery was not free from such deplorable calamities; and during the time that Stephenson was employed as a brakesman at the West Moor, several “blasts” took place in the pit, by which many workmen were scorched and killed, and the owners of the colliery sustained heavy losses.
A man was despatched on a horse with the letter, and when he reached Killingworth he made diligent enquiry after the person named upon the address, “George Stephenson, Esquire, Engineer.” No such person was known in the village.
It will be remembered that in Stephenson’s first Killingworth engines he invented and applied the ingenious method of stimulating combustion in the furnace, by throwing the waste steam into the chimney after performing its office in the cylinders, thus accelerating the ascent of the current of air, greatly increasing the draught, and consequently the temperature of the fire.
Many years after, George took a party of savans, when attending the meeting of the British Association at Newcastle, over to Killingworth to see the pits, and he did not fail to direct their attention to the sun-dial; and Robert, on the last visit which he made to the place, a short time before his death, took a friend into the cottage, and pointed out to him the very desk, still there, at which he had sat while making his calculations of the latitude of Killingworth.
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