GEORGE STEPHENSON (1781 –1848)

GEORGE STEPHENSON (1781 –1848)

English inventor of the first steam locomotive engine

 

Stephenson was a pioneering railway engineer and inventor of the 'Rocket', the most famous early railway locomotive.

George Stephenson was born on 9 June 1781. His father was an engineman at a coalmine. Stephenson himself worked at the mine and learned to read and write in his spare time. He gained a reputation for managing the primitive steam engines employed in mines, and worked in a number of different coalmines in the northeast of England and in Scotland.

In 1814, Stephenson constructed his first locomotive, 'Blucher', for hauling coal at Killingworth Colliery near Newcastle. In 1815, he invented a safety lamp for use in coalmines, nicknamed the 'Geordie'. In 1821, Stephenson was appointed engineer for the construction of the Stockton and Darlington railway. It opened in 1825 and was the first public railway. The following year Stephenson was made engineer for the Liverpool to Manchester Railway.

In October 1829, the railway's owners staged a competition at to find the best kind of locomotive to pull heavy loads over long distances. Thousands came to watch. Stephenson's locomotive 'Rocket' was the winner, achieving a record speed of 36 miles per hour. The opening of the Stockton to Darlington railway and the success of 'Rocket' stimulated the laying of railway lines and the construction of locomotives all over the country. Stephenson became engineer on a number of these projects and was also consulted on the development of railways in Belgium and Spain. Stephenson died on 12 August 1848 in Chesterfield in Derbyshire.

NIKOLAUS OTTO (1832-1891)

ALFRED NOBEL (1833–1896)

NIKOLAI ZHUKOVSKY (1847 – 1921)

ALEXANDER LODYGIN (1847 – 1923)

NIKOLA TESLA (1856–1943)

KONSTANTIN TSIOLKOVSKY (1857–1935)

Russian Father of Rocketry

 

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky was born in Izhevskoye. He was the son of a Polish deportee to Siberia. At the age of ten he nearly became deaf from scarlet fever and had to quit school. He refused to be handicapped by his deafness and continued his education on his own at home. His family recognized his thirst for knowledge and sent him to Moscow to attend college. He became a teacher in Kaluga.

Even as a teacher, Tsiolkovsky found time to learn. He read Jules Verne's stories of space travel and began to write science fiction stories himself. He introduced elements of science and technology into his stories, such as the problem of controlling a rocket as it moved between gravitational fields. Gradually Tsiolkovsky moved from writing science fiction to writing theoretical papers on topics such as gyroscopes, escape velocities, the principle of action and reaction, and the use of liquid propellant rockets.

In 1894 Tsiolkovsky designed a monoplane that was not flown until 1915. He built the first Russian wind tunnel in 1897. He also was an insightful visionary who thought a great deal about the uses of his beloved rockets to explore and master space.

He was the author of Investigations of Outer Space by Rocket Devices (1911) and Aims of Astronauts (1914). Although rockets had been in use since their invention in twelfth-century China as weapons that evolved from fireworks, it was Tsiolkovsky who used mathematics and physics to study and model the manner in which they operated, called rocket dynamics.

In 1903 he published the rocket equation in a Russian aviation magazine. Called the Tsiolkovsky formula, it established the relationships among rocket speed, the speed of the gas at exit, and the mass of the rocket and its propellant. This equation is the basis of much of the spacecraft engineering done today. In 1929 he published his theory of multistage rockets, based on his knowledge of propulsion dynamics.

Tsiolkovsky is remembered for believing in the dominance of humanity throughout space, he had grand ideas about space industrialization and the exploitation of its resources.

Tsiolkovsky has been honored since his death in 1935. A far side moon crater is named in his honor. In 1989 he was invested in the International Aerospace Hall of Fame. In Russia, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky is called "the father of theoretical and applied cosmonautics."

 

ALAN TURING (1912 – 1954)

GEORGE STEPHENSON (1781 –1848)

Поделиться: