The Project Gutenberg eBook of Lives of the Engineers, by Samuel Smiles

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Title: Lives of the Engineers
The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson

Author: Samuel Smiles

Release Date: January 5, 2009 [eBook #27710]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIVES OF THE ENGINEERS***

This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler.

[Picture: George Stephenson]

LIVES
OF THE
ENGINEERS.

THE LOCOMOTIVE.

GEORGE AND ROBERT STEPHENSON.

BY SAMUEL SMILES,
AUTHOR OF 'CHARACTER,' 'SELF-HELP,' ETC.

"Bid Harbours open, Public Ways extend;
Bid Temples, worthier of God, ascend;
Bid the broad Arch the dang'rous flood contain,
The Mole projected break the roaring main,
Back to his bounds their subject sea command,
And roll obedient rivers through the land.
These honours, Peace to happy Britain brings;
These are imperial works, and worthy kings."

POPE.

_A NEW AND REVISED EDITION_.

* * * * *

LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1879.

_The right of Translation is reserved_.

INTRODUCTION.

Since the appearance of this book in its original form, some seventeen
years since, the construction of Railways has continued to make
extraordinary progress. Although Great Britain, first in the field, had
then, after about twenty-five years' work, expended nearly 300 millions
sterling in the construction of 8300 miles of railway, it has, during the
last seventeen years, expended about 288 millions more in constructing
7780 additional miles.

But the construction of railways has proceeded with equal rapidity on the
Continent. France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland,
Holland,