George Stephenson

George Stephenson (1781 to 1848) was an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer, remembered as the Father of Railways. Victorian writers treated him as a model of diligent application and thirst for improvement. Rail transport, which he pioneered, became one of the most important technological inventions of the nineteenth century and a key component of the Industrial Revolution. Locomotion No. 1, built by Robert Stephenson and Company, the firm of George and his son Robert, was the first steam locomotive to carry passengers on a public rail line, the Stockton and Darlington Railway, in 1825. He also built the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which opened in 1830 as the first public inter-city railway in the world to use locomotives. The rail gauge he chose, four feet eight and a half inches, became the standard gauge of most of the world's railways.