Stephenson's famous steam locomotive 'Rocket'.

George Stephenson's Rocket, built in 1829, is chosen because it could easily belong in any or all of the human need categories of work, rest or play in the 19th century.

Although it was built some years after the first steam locomotive built by Richard Trevithick in 1804, the Rocket was innovative for a number of reasons and was created to participate in the Rainham Trials, an engineering show where it shone as the stand out invention.

Because of Stephenson's Rocket, travel would never be the same again as people were able to jump on a train thanks to the steam locomotive and George Stephenson (and his son, Robert) deserve their places as the main inventors and innovators of rail transport, especially in Britain.

His invention led to thousands, maybe million miles of track being laid down all over the world in the name of commerce, industry and leisure.

George Stephenson is honoured with a statue at the Railway Museum in York. If you ever find yourself in York it is well worth a visit; an interesting museum full of wonderful old locomotives and admission to the museum is completely free.

Imagine the USA's incredible railway building programme without Stephenson's locomotion engine?

Imagine industries like mining, textiles and farming becoming successful without the ability to move products from A to B quickly and efficiently?

Stephenson's steam locomotion remains one of the most interesting inventions of the 19th century because other country's grasped its fundamental usefulness and saw that it was peerless in terms of moving not only things but people from place to place; yes, it was slow at first but once Stephenson had made the invention, he worked tirelessly, as did others, to make it faster.

The railways remain a viable form of transport even in this day and age.

Photography

'Photography' or 'Photographie' was a word first coined in the 19th century.

Nobody is quite sure who came up with it first but in any event it was derived from the Greek, photo and graphe (literally meaning 'drawing with light').

Incredibly, inventors of the 19th century were often working on the same ideas at the same time.

For example, there is very little to separate Trevithick, Stephenson and Brunel in the creation of the steam locomotion. All were actively pursuing the same idea at the same time; Stephenson, though is regarded as the 'inventor' because he perfected the ideas.

In the invention of photography, there is a similar pattern with Niepce and Daguerre in France, Hershel in England, Maxwell in Scotland and Eastman in the USA all seemingly working on ideas with the same core aim.

Niepce was the first person to create an actual photograph though it required a heavy metal plate and the use of bitumen, substantial exposure times and then a difficult process of polishing the metal plate to finally create an image.

Before this though, the only way of creating images with light was by using a camera obscura. Camera Obscura were an ancient form of projecting the human form, using light, onto a surface but up until Niepce's first photographic image, nobody had found a way to capture an image created by light.

Further work after Niepce's death by his partner, Louis Daguerre refined the processes, though exposire time still ran into hours.

In 1839, English physicist, mathematician and astronomer, Sir John Herschel using Niepce's ideas refined them by discovering that similar negative images could be rendered onto glass rather than metal plates and he also discovered that silver had far better photo catalyst properties than bitumen and cut exposure times considerably.

In 1861, James Clerk Maxwell created the first coloured photo of a tartan ribbon but he is rarely mentioned as one of the great 19th century inventors because his is more famous as a physicist dealing with electromagnetism, yet it is incredible to think of a coloured photo created as early as 1860 when most of us have memories of our own early photos always being in black and white.

The creation of the first camera for sale to the general public was by the Eastman Company in the USA, later knows as Kodak. This brought the 'pocket' camera to the masses.

At first, photography was seen as a useful aide for artists and then as a way of creating memento of family members. It was not seen as an 'art' until the early 20th century.

Amazing that we all take it for granted that our mobile phones have really great cameras - exposure takes seconds and we can share them with everyone we know within 5 seconds of taking the photo.

The first photograph (featured on the right) took over 8 hours to create!

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 1019