Robert Stephenson

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Robert Stephenson
Memorial to Robert Stephenson outside Euston Station in London

Robert Stephenson (born October 16, 1803 in Willington Quay , † October 12, 1859 in London ) was a British engineer . He was the only son of locomotive designer and railroad engineer George Stephenson . Many achievements, which are often wrongly attributed to George Stephenson alone, were the result of collaborative work.

Life

Robert Stephenson, whose mother and sister died early, grew up alone with his father, who gave him the education and training that he himself had lacked. George Stephenson was careful to give his son the best possible start in life; he showed great interest in the father's work. After attending the private Bruce Academy in Newcastle upon Tyne , an apprenticeship with Nicolas Wood (director of the Killingsworth colliery) and a semester at the University of Edinburgh , Robert Stephenson worked on railway projects with his father.

The first of these projects was the Stockton and Darlington Railway from 1821 . Father and son founded a company in 1823 together with Edward Pease and Michael Longridge (owners of Bedlington Eisenwerke) to build steam locomotives ; the company Robert Stephenson and Company existed almost 120 years the original factory building at the Forth Street, Newcastle still exists today. With his locomotive The Rocket , Robert Stephenson won the legendary Rainhill race . After this success, the company supplied additional locomotives for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway and other rail lines.

In 1833 Robert Stephenson was appointed chief engineer of the London and Birmingham Railway , which was London's first railway line when it was completed in 1838 . The railway line (which later became the West Coast Main Line ) presented Stephenson with some engineering challenges, particularly the Kilsby Tunnel . The early locomotive models could not cope with the incline between Euston station and Chalk Farm on their own and therefore had to be pulled up on chains. The building for the stationary steam engine is still standing today and it is located at the Roundhouse and serves as a cultural center.

Robert Stephenson kept his interest in locomotive construction, but soon began to specialize in bridge construction . His most famous buildings include the Conwy Railway Bridge near Conwy , the High Level Bridge in Newcastle, the Britannia Bridge over Menai Strait and the Pont Victoria over the Saint Lawrence River near Montreal . One of the few setbacks was the railway accident on the Dee Bridge near Chester , which was caused by the collapse of a bridge he had designed on May 24, 1847. Stephenson had been harshly criticized even before the accident, which left five people dead, in particular for the use of inadequate building materials.

Robert Stephenson was an internationally sought-after railroad expert. For example, he advised his friend, the French engineer Paulin Talabot, on the construction of the Chemins de fer du Gard from Beaucaire to Alès between 1837 and 1840 , traveled to Spain to advise on the construction of the railway from the Bay of Biscay to Madrid and visited the Orléans railway - Tours . In 1846, at the request of Prosper Enfantin , he became a member of the Société d'Études du Canal de Suez together with Talabot and Alois Negrelli . In 1849 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In the autumn of 1850, he traveled to Switzerland on behalf of the Swiss Federal Council in order to prepare a route expertise and a financial report for the planned railway network, as well as to give general advice. From 1851 to 1853 he built the railroad from Alexandria to Cairo , which was extended to Suez in 1858 .

Since 1849 he was a member of the Royal Society . In 1855 he was elected an honorary member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

From 1847 until his death, Stephenson, who was friends with Isambard Kingdom Brunel , was a member of parliament for the Whitby constituency ; he was a member of the Conservative Party . He turned down the title of nobility offered to him for his services. After his death he was buried in Westminster Abbey in London and was given a memorial together with his father in 1879 at Torino Porta Nuova train station in Turin . The Stephenson Railway Museum in North Shields has been honoring the achievements of George and Robert Stephenson since 1986 .

“As in Germany, after Humboldt went home, Karl Ritter soon followed him into the afterlife, so in England Robert Stephenson divorced this world very shortly after his famous colleague Brunel . Apart from their talents, both had one thing in common: they were the sons of excellent fathers who had worked in the same field as them. If there is any merit in facilitating travel, thereby promoting intercourse between nations, increasing general prosperity, and promoting the advancement of civilization, Messrs. Brunel and Stephenson have done their best for humanity and have a right to acquired a fresh laurel wreath […] Stephenson died on 12th d. early. The evil to which he succumbed and which had haunted him for about two years was a liver disease. His death will be felt even more bitterly by the large number of his friends than by his colleagues at work; for, according to everything that has been heard about him, he was a good person to an even greater degree than a great engineer. He spent thousands of pounds sterling annually on charity without the world knowing about it. In particular he did a great deal for the children of old friends who had shown him goodwill in his youth. He sent them to the best schools and provided them with ample funds. His students literally adored him and he knew, through his benevolent, open, free nature, to acquire the affection of all with whom he came into closer contact. "

- Obituary in the Ost-Deutsche-Post from October 17, 1859

literature

  • LTC Rolt : George and Robert Stephenson: the railway revolution. Longmans Green 1960, Penguin Press 1960, ISBN 0-14-007646-8 , reprint Amberley Press 2010.

Web links

Commons : Robert Stephenson  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paulin Talabot , biography of Baron Ernouf, 1886 (French).
  2. ↑ Order of the Federal Council dated June 7, 1850. Swiss Federal Archives , digital official publications (Federal Gazette 3/1850), accessed on April 5, 2013 .
  3. ^ The Suez Canal. Arnold T. Wilson, 1939 (English; PDF; 12.1 MB).
  4. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed April 11, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Robert Stephenson . In: East German Post . October 17, 1859, p. 1 ( ANNO - AustriaN Newspapers Online [accessed May 5, 2020]).
personal data
SURNAME Stephenson, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British engineer
DATE OF BIRTH October 16, 1803
PLACE OF BIRTH Willington Quay
DATE OF DEATH October 12, 1859
Place of death London