THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL INVENTORS OF ALL TIME

7 The 100 Most Influential Inventors of All Time 7

satisfied, he sought to improve his locomotive’s power
and introduced the “steam blast,” by which exhaust steam
was redirected up the chimney, pulling air after it and
increasing the draft. The new design made the locomotive
truly practical.
Over the next few years, Stephenson built several
locomotives for Killingworth and other collieries and
gained a measure of fame by inventing a mine-safety lamp.
In 1821 he heard of a project for a railroad, employing
draft horses, to be built from Stockton to Darlington to
facilitate exploitation of a rich vein of coal. At Darlington
he interviewed the promoter, Edward Pease, and so
impressed him that Pease commissioned him to build a
steam locomotive for the line. On Sept. 27, 1825, railroad
transportation was born when the first public passenger
train, pulled by Stephenson’s Active (later renamed
Locomotion), ran from Darlington to Stockton, carrying
450 persons at 15 miles (24 km) per hour. Liverpool and
Manchester interests called him in to build a 40-mile
(64-kilometre) railroad line to connect the two cities. To
survey and construct the line, Stephenson had to outwit
the violent hostility of farmers and landlords who feared,
among other things, that the railroad would supplant horse-
drawn transportation and shut off the market for oats.
When the Liverpool-Manchester line was nearing
completion in 1829, a competition was held for loco-
motives; Stephenson’s new engine, the Rocket, which he
built with his son, Robert, won with a speed of 36 miles
(58 km) per hour. Eight locomotives were used when the
Liverpool-Manchester line opened on Sept. 15, 1830, and
all of them had been built in Stephenson’s Newcastle
works. From this time on, railroad building spread rapidly
throughout Britain, Europe, and North America, and
George Stephenson continued as the chief guide of the
revolutionary transportation medium, solving problems