George Stephenson

en.wikipedia.org

28 points·keepamovin··5 comments

Great to see a local lad on HN! For those fortunate enough to be visiting the North East of England, there are plenty of great engineering tourism opportunities - see the Rocket at the Locomotion museum in Shildon, try the Stephenson Railway in Wallsend and of course Cragside, Lord Armstrong's house up in Rothbury is always worth a visit!

He's a big figure here in Chesterfield too. He spent the last ten years of his life here.

He was here to build the midlands railway. When he dug the clay cross tunnel he struck coal and iron which started a boom for neighbouring villages. My dad worked for his company until 1998 and I grew up about a mile from the tunnel.

Later, he died at Tapton House - I can see it from my window now, it's also the place where I wrote my first computer program.

The town museum is in the Stephenson Memorial hall and a statue of him is outside the railway station.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cragside

https://www.theregister.com/2019/03/18/geeks_guide_to_britai...

That is some serious steampunk.

Also worth a trip to:

https://www.beamish.org.uk/

To see a lot of Industrial Revolution tech actually working.

It's slightly possible I'm related to him. My great grandfather moved to the US in the early 1900s. My grandfather told me he offered to buy a ticket for all of the Stephensons who wanted to move here to the US. He was "metal man" (mostly working with sheet metal), so was my grandfather and father.

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