One of the railway engines
that made George Stephenson famous, 'The Rocket'.
George Stephenson (1779 to 1843) was born in a cottage on the Eastern fringe of Wylam. He is generally credited as the principal inventor of the railway locomotive and is often known as The Father of the Railways. Railway transportation was born on 27th September 1825 when Stephenson's Locomotion ran from Darlington to Stockton, carrying 450 persons at 15 miles per hour (24km/h). Stephenson's later Rocket won a famous competition to find the fastest locomotive by travelling at an average speed of 36 miles per hour (58km/h) from Liverpool to Manchester in 1830.
He is also credited as the first designer of the Miner's Safety Lamp - though many people credit the invention to Sir Humphrey Davy who was working at the same time, but completely independently, on a similar design.
Also see Some Historical Notes On George and Robert Stevenson
Also associated with Wylam is another railway engineer, William Hedley. He was born in Newburn, just a few miles away, and went to school in Wylam. He patented a design for one of the first locomotives, the Puffing Billy which began to pull coal trucks for about five miles (8km) from Wylam to the dockside at Leamington in 1813.
Yet another well known engineer associated with Wylam was Sir Charles Parsons. He was born in London but entered the Armstrong engineering works in Newcastle at the age of 23 before establishing his own works, also in Newcastle, in 1889. He lived at Holeyn Hall in Wylam and it was at this house that he invented the first multi-stage steam turbine. In 1891 the turbine was fitted with a condenser for use in electricity generating stations, a use to which it has been put ever since.
In 1897 the engine was successfully applied to marine propulsion in the Turbinia, a ship that achieved a speed of 34 knots - extraordinary for the time. The Turbinia has a central place in Newcastle's newly re-furbished Discovery Museum (Blandford Place).
The Parsons engineering works in Newcastle still produces turbines for power stations across the world and is currently part of the Rolls-Royce group of companies.