George Stephenson: Self-Taught Engineer, World Changer, Part 1 of 2

In 1790, the Venerated Ascended Master, the Count of Saint Germain (vegetarian) is said to have shared His plans with His friend, Franz Gräffer, stating, “Tomorrow night I am off. I am much needed in Constantinople, then in England, there to prepare two new inventions which you will have in the next century – trains and steamboats. […] Toward the end of this century, I shall disappear out of Europe and betake myself to the region of the Himalayas. I will rest; I must rest. Exactly in 85 years will people again set eyes on me. Farewell.”

Subsequently, as the Victorian era began to take shape in 19th-century England, powerful human-made machines emerged: iron engines with hissing pistons driven by compressed water vapor. This new technology would soon transform the world in profound and lasting ways. It boosted agricultural productivity. And it made long-distance transportation faster and more efficient through the development of the locomotive engine.

Before this great age of technological progress, few could have imagined it would be shaped by someone of George Stephenson’s humble beginnings. Born to working-class parents who could neither read nor write, he would nonetheless rise to prominence and become known as the “Father of Railways.”

In the northern English village of Wylam, Northumberland, where George Stephenson was born in 1781, life revolved around coal mining. His father, Robert Stephenson, worked as a fireman at the local colliery near Newcastle, tending the furnace that kept the steam-powered water pumps in operation. His parents could not afford formal schooling, and George was sent to work at a young age. At just eight years old, he was keeping a neighbor’s cow-people from straying onto the wagonways and later working as a farmhand, hoeing turnips. Even then, George nurtured a quiet ambition to one day operate a steam engine himself.

Largely self-taught, he spent his spare time dismantling and reassembling engines, studying their weaknesses, and experimenting with practical solutions. Quietly, he built a reputation as a man who understood machines better than many formally trained engineers. In 1811, when a pumping engine, at High Pit, Killingworth, had stood idle for nearly a year after other engineers failed to repair it, George Stephenson stepped forward and succeeded where others had not. This achievement earned him promotion to enginewright – the mechanic responsible for maintaining and repairing all the colliery’s steam engines – marking his emergence as a recognized engineer and expert in steam-driven machinery.