Stephenson, George

George Stephenson (1781–1848), an English engineer and locomotive builder who developed the first successful steam-powered locomotive in 1815. In 1825, his railway locomotive Locomotion was the first to operate on the world’s first passenger railway, the Stockton–Darlington Railway in northeast England. Stephenson made important advances in railway design, including the use of tunnels and embankments and the substitution of malleable iron rails for cast iron. He also devised a miner’s safety lamp at about the same time (c.1815) as Sir Humphry Davy, whose lamp was adopted in 1816. Stephenson's design embodied several features of the Davy lamp and is considered by some to have predated Davy’s invention.