The European Industrial Revolution replaced factory crafts with a large machine industry. The machine industry needs a lot of fuel, raw materials, and also to send the products produced to various places. Before the 19th century, transportation relied on ships on the water, and only horse-drawn carriages on land, which was far from meeting the needs of large industry. The machine industry calls for the birth of modern means of transportation.
In 1814, Stephenson, a British engineer born as a cattle herder, built a steam locomotive that walked on railroad tracks and officially invented the train.
Stephenson was born in 1781 to a steam engine stoker father in a coal mine and a mother who was unemployed. The family of eight lives on their father's salary and has a hard time. At the age of 14, Stephenson also came to the coal mine and became a trainee stoker. He loved the job, and after work, he carefully scrubbed the machine and cleaned the parts. After many disassembling, disassembling and assembling, he mastered the structure of the machine. In order to acquire more knowledge, Stephenson went to night school in addition to hard work. He had never been to school, and it was difficult to start learning, but with diligent study, he quickly mastered the knowledge of mechanics, drawing, etc. Once, he used the knowledge he learned in books and combined with the reality of his work to design a machine. The chief engineer at the mine saw the sketch of the machine he had designed and praised it, which gave Stephenson a great encouragement. He studied, worked harder and diligently, and soon became a skilled mechanic.
Stephenson summed up the lessons of the failures of his predecessors and began to develop steam locomotives, he improved the boiler that produced steam, changed the vertical boiler to a horizontal boiler, and made a very far-sighted and major decision, decided to put the steam locomotive on the track; The rim was added to the sides of the wheels to prevent the train from derailing; A toothed sleeper was added between the two load-bearing tracks. Because at that time, considering that the steam locomotive was driving on the track, although it could avoid the shortcomings of being too heavy to walk on the general road, it could also cause the problem of wheel slippage on the track, so a ratchet was installed on the locomotive, so it rolled on the toothed third rail and drove the motor car forward.
In 1814, Stephenson's steam locomotive was introduced. The iron guy he invented weighed 5 tons and had a huge flywheel on the front of the car. This flywheel could use inertia to help locomotives move, and Stephenson gave his invention the name "Brooke". This brook can drive 8 carriages with a total weight of about 30 tons. Over the next 10 years, he built 11 more locomotives similar to Brooke.
Stephenson's new invention also has many drawbacks, the first of which is that the vibration is too great. Once, it even overturned the car; The second is that the speed is not fast. Therefore, he was not satisfied with this, and continued to study ways to increase the power of locomotives, using the steam blower method, which guided the exhaust gas upwards and sprayed out of the chimney, driving the air behind, thereby strengthening ventilation. This new design brought the steam locomotive into practical use. People gave it a name called "train".
On September 27, 1825, more than 40,000 spectators were packed near Stockton, England, and brass bands stood neatly by the railroad tracks, and people looked forward to the winding railway. Suddenly, a rousing whistle was heard, and Stephenson himself drove the world's first train to sp in clouds. Behind the locomotive was 12 coal cars, with another 20 cars carrying about 450 passengers. The train approached, and the earth trembled slightly. The train slowly stopped, and a thunderous cheer erupted from the crowd. The brass band played a rousing tune, and seven salutes were fired at the same time. The train traveled from Darlington to Stockton at a speed of 24 kilometers per hour, and the rail transport career began.
In February 1828, Seguin imported two Stephenson locomotives from England for use on the Lyon-Saint-Etienne section. But he was not very satisfied with this locomotive. In 1829, he set about building a tubular boiler locomotive of his own invention. The traction of this locomotive greatly exceeds that of the Stephenson locomotive, but it also has a speed of only 10 kilometers per hour. Therefore, after manufacturing about ten units, production was stopped. But later, Stephenson himself adopted the Segan boiler as the driving force behind his newly improved train.
In 1829, a locomotive race was held, and Stephenson's new locomotive, the Rocket, won at a speed of 58 kilometers per hour. Later, the construction of railways began rapidly in England, Europe and North America, and Stephenson became the main inventor of this revolutionary means of transportation, and the problem of land transportation was solved.