of the engine being simply for support, and having no contact with the motive force. This engine ran its first trip in August of 1812, and for several years worked with others of a similar design in conveying coal from Middleton to Leeds.
In the meantime Chapman's chain engine had been tried on the Hetton Colliery Tramroad, near Newcastle-on-Tyne (patented December, 1811), but it proved a failure. There were other failures too, for William Hedley, in February, 1813, tried his first locomotive, intended for use on Mr. Blackett's Wylam Colliery line, but it proved a failure for want of steam. Mr. Blackett, however, retained his faith in steam power, and he instructed Hedley to build a second engine, completed in May of 1813, named "Puffing Billy." This engine, tried on the Wylam line, had a wrought iron boiler, with a return flue, and like Trevithick's pioneer engine, it had the chimney at the same end as the fire-door, It had two vertical cylinders, the piston-rods being connected to beams, from which motion was communicated to the four smooth driving wheels by means of toothed gear. This engine continued working at Wylam until 1862, when it was removed to the South Kensington Museum. Hedley and Blackett, it should be noticed, followed Trevithick in preferring smooth wheels on smooth rails, and they did not follow Murray and Blenkinsop as to cogs.
A patent was obtained in 1813 by Mr. Brunton, of the Butterley Ironworks, Derbyshire, for the locomotion of an engine without the aid of the adhesion of the wheels. It was literally a steam horse, having a pair of hind legs actuated by steam cylinders, but it proved a failure.
We now come to the entry of George Stephenson into the locomotive world, Ideas had hitherto been confined ta crude engines intended to pull coal along colliery tracks, but Stephenson nursed an altogether wider vision of the new possibilities. Let us briefly trace the life of this remarkable man, the father of footplate workers. He was born in a small cottage between Close House and Wylam, in Northumberland, within nine miles of Newcastle, about 1772, and on June 9th, 1781, he started work at twopence per day on a
