Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 232, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 September 1915 — LOCOMOTIVE IS CENTURY OLD [ARTICLE]

LOCOMOTIVE IS CENTURY OLD

First Put Into Operation in 1814 By George Btephenson—Rocket Had Speed of 35 Miles.

The first locomotive was completed and put into operation just a century ago, in 1814, by George Stephenson, who was bom in Wylam, England, June 9, 1781. He was engineer at a colliery when he invented a traveling engine to draw wagons along a tramway. Stephenson’s first locomotive attained a speed of six miles an hour. Improvement after improvement was made, not only in the locomotive, but in the rails, and in 1822 Stephenson opened the first railway, which waß eight miles in length. ,: ■ In 1829 his locomotive, the Rocket, reached a speed of 35 miles an hour, winning the prize of $2,500 offered by the Liverpool & Manchester Railway company. , The entire system of railway locomotion, with stations, signals, tenders and carriages, was completed with the inauguration of the Liverpool & Manchester line in 1830. Stephenson was largely instrumental in establishing all the English and foreign lines during the first period of railroading. He died in 1848. The centenary of steam locomotives finds those engines improved and enlarged beyond the wildest dreams of the inventory but already threatened with extinction’ by the electric locomotive.