George Stephenson's Invention

George Stephenson

George Stephenson was born on June 9, 1781, in England. He was very ambitious and was always fascinated by machinery.

First Locomotive

George Stephenson was impressed by the work done by William Hedley and Timothy Hackworth, so he to wanted to try to build railway engine. In 1813, he started to design to his first locomotive.

The Blucher Hauls Coal

 So, in 1814 he built the Blucher.  It was his first locomotive for hauling coal at Killingworth Colliery. It wasn’t the best railway engine but it helped him to improve his design and built more advanced engine.

George Stephenson also invented a safe lamp in 1815. The lamp he invented would not explode even if we used around the flammable gasses that could be found in the coal mines.　

First Public Railways

 In 1821, he was given approval to built railway between Stockton and Darlington.  And in 1825, he started the first public railway.

By; Jyoti KC

References
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/stephenson_george.shtml　
http://inventors.about.com/od/sstartinventors/a/Stephenson.htm

Invention before George Stephenson(By Bertha A. Gonzalez

Have you ever traveled by train?  What type of experience did you have?  Were the accommodations what you expected?   How long did it get you to arrive to your destination?  Most of us take for granted how the transportation by train came to be today.  Unless we are pursuing an engineering degree we can grasp the facts behind how a railroad and trains of today were built.  History is the ancient Greeks had initially thought of railroads.  They dug pathways in the ground of the top layer of the earth called dirt in which they used to navigate their wagons that facilitated moving things from one point to the other.  By the fifteenth century the European people developed wooden buggies on wooden wheels.  It wasn’t until 150 years ago the first modern railroad stream locomotive of today were initiated in invention by Richard Trevithick in 1803.

   

Richard Trevithick (1771-1833)

The railways had a connection from the east and the west coasts of the United States.  They measured in a length of 1800 miles of railroad.  The railroads were known to the Native Americans as “iron horse”.  The industrialization growth and expansion of the growth in the economy at that time depended a lot on the railroad transportation.  Many people started building around the railroads to ease means of transporting goods from the United States as far to Canada.  The speed on the Trevithicks steam engine reached speeds of 12mph.  Unfortunately this invention failed.  Bringing it the Thomas Savery to develop a new format in creating a more powerful steam powered machine.

  

                                                      Picture of the first steam engines.

The first crude steam powered machine was built in 1698 by Thomas Savery.  This machine worked by a water pump that used coal.    This then consisted of another help of Thomas Necomen.  He developed a machine that would ease the process of how a steam engine worked. 

  Everything changed in 1763, when James Watt, came into the picture and set out to improve on Newcomen's design.  Watt developed a crankshaft that produced a circular motion with the steam.

  James Watt

With the invention of the work put together concluded in the official steam engine.  This is when the modern railroad of today came to be.   James Watt and his fellow inventors can be credited not only for the development of the steam engine and the rail road, but also for ushering in the industrial revolution and with the, came a reward of an improved modern age.  Their final product was the “Steam Engine” of the modern revolution days.

 

 

Invention BY:  Bertha A. Gonzalez

Henry Bessemer

Henry Bessemer

By: Sherri Beeson

  

Henry Bessemer was born on January 19, 1813 in Charlton, Hertfordshire, England., the son of an engineer and typefounder. He demonstrated considerable mechanical skill and inventiveness early in life. He made his first great wealth by selling "gold" powder made from brass as a paint additive.  His secret formula was used to adorn much of the gilded decoration of his time. In 1855, Bessemer took out a patent for his process of rendering cast iron malleable by the introduction of air into the fluid metal to remove carbon.. The process was called the "hundred refinings method" since they repeated the process 100 times. Bessemer's attention was drawn to the problem of steel manufacture in the course of an attempt to improve the construction of guns.  During the Crimean war after Bessemer had developed a new type of artillery shell; the Generals reported that the cast-iron cannon of the time were not strong enough to deal with the forces of it.  In response, he developed an improved iron smelting process that produced large quantities of ingots of superior quality. He patented a process by which molten pig-iron could be turned directly into steel by blowing air through it in a converter.  This cut out the wrought-iron stage and dramatically reduced the cost of producing steel.  Modern steel is still made using technology based on Bessemer's process.  Much of the modern industrial age has built upon steel created for cannon of war. Among the many honors of Bessemer's life were a Knighthood by the British crown for devising a counterfeit-proof official stamp (seal) for the British government, and the Fellowship of the Royal Society.  Bessemer died in London on March 14, 1898.

 Henry Bessemer

Born January 19, 1813

Died March 15, 1898

Samuel Slater

Slater Mill - Rhode Island

 Samuel Slater

By: Sherri Beeson

Samuel Slater has been called the "father of the American factory system."Samuel Slater was born in Belper, Derbyshire, England June 9, 1768, the fifth son of a farming family of eight children.  Samuel received a basic education at a school run by a Mr. Jackson in Belper. [1] At a very young age he began work at the cotton mill opened that year by Jedediah Strutt As his twenty-first birthday the  cotton industry in England was  well developed and scope for expansion was limited. Starting his own company was not a valid option for Slater in England. At this time the desperate American textile industry was offering $100 to people with British technological knowledge. This technology was highly valued and Slater was a prime pupil in British textiles. The exportation of British technology secrets was illegal at that time. Anyone caught attempting to export these textile industry secrets out of England into other countries was charged with treason.  But in September 1789, Slater arrived in America with the secrets in his memory and on documents hidden in his clothes. When he arrived in New York City and was hired in the local textile mill, he realized how valuable his information was to the American industry.  He went on and decided to start his own textile factory, which would eventually become Slater Mill. After studying the various cotton manufactures in the area.  He purchased a range of spinning and weaving equipment.  Slater teamed up with a Quaker merchant, Moses Brown, to build America's first water-powered cotton spinning mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. By the e 1790, it was up and running.  The mill required that workers  walk  treadmills  in order  to generate power.  By 1791, a waterwheel drove the machinery that carded and spun cotton into thread. Slater employed families, including children, to live and work at the mill site. Slater and his brother built a mill village they called Slatersville, also in Rhode Island. It included a large, modern mill, tenement houses for its workers, and a company store -- a small pocket of industry, a ready-made rural village. Slater's factory system became known as the Rhode Island System. By 1800 the phenomenal success of the Slater mill had been duplicated by other entrepreneurs; by 1810 U.S. had some 50 cotton-yarn mills, many of them started in response to the Embargo of 1807 that cut off imports from Britain. The War of 1812 sped up the process of industrialization; when it ended in 1815 there were within 30 miles of Providence 140 cotton manufacturers employing 26,000 hands and operating 130,000 spindles.  The American textile industry was launched. Slater died in 1835.

Samuel Slater

Born May 4, 1768

Died April 21, 1835

Samuel F. B. Morse

 Original Samuel Morse Telegraph (picture from wikipedia.org

Samuel F. B. Morse
By: Gabriel Macias 

Communication Morse Code was invented by Samuel F. B Morse in the beginning of the 1890's. It started originally as an electric pulse but eventually it changed to an audio tone. Beeps and pauses made up the messages. It was an early radio communication and it revolutionized international communication. The Type Writer was invented by Christopher Latham Sholes in 1874. The first type writer was known as the "Sholes and Glidden Type Writter" and was manufactured by "Remington and Sons" (the gun company) At first it wasn’t very popular( no more than 5000 were sold) but it did found a new world wide industry. It also brought mechanization to the office space. The Telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell. It was a wire based electrical system, that completely surpassed Morse Code. It changed society as the world knew it. Of course it suffered a few technical problems at first, and there was some opposition, but it became so popular that almost everyone in the Western World owned a telephone. The first words spoken were ""Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want to see you." which was Bell speaking to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson. 

 Samuel F. B. Morse

Born April 27, 1791 

Died April 2, 1872