When everyone sits on the rumbling train, many people may think that its inventor must be a great scientist who has gone through many years of further study. In fact, Stephenson, known as the "father of trains", was a poor miner, and he was still illiterate at the age of 17.

On June 9, 1781, George Stephenson was born in Northumberland, England, into the family of a coal miner. Due to his poor family, he began to help people herd cattle when he was 8 years old. At the age of 14, his father took him to work in his mine, and he became an assistant to a steam engine stoker. A day's hard work often made his back sore and his legs ached, so in his heart, he had long buried the desire to innovate machinery to benefit his fellow workers. No matter how tired he was at work, he never refused to rest in his spare time. He always stayed next to the machine, observed carefully and pondered carefully. But he had not read it all day, and he couldn't even understand the marks and instructions on the machine. In order to make up for his lack of knowledge of culture and science, Stephenson began to attend night school at the age of 17. Because he studied hard, it did not take long for him to learn various scientific and technological books by himself.

One day, one of the machines in the mine broke down suddenly, and the mechanics couldn't find the reason after repairing it for a long time. Then Stephenson came. He circled the machine a few times and volunteered, "Let me try it out." He took all the parts off, checked them one by one, repaired the problem, and quickly assembled it as it was. The machine was repaired as it was, and the people present gave a round of approval. Therefore, Stephenson was promoted to the first craftsman-turned-engineer in the mine.

After becoming an engineer, Stephenson did not stop at the achievements he had made. He was determined to use the steam engine invented by Watt for transportation. On the basis of the locomotive model created by his predecessors, through many experiments, he finally produced a practical steam locomotive in 1814. The locomotive could pull 30 tons and solved the problem of frequent train derailments. But the locomotive had many shortcomings, not only slow speed, severe vibration, loud noise, but also high flames coming out of the chimney. Stephenson continued to experiment and improve. After another 11 years of hard research, the world's first passenger and freight steam locomotive, Travel, was finally born.

On the morning of September 27, 1825, the test run was held on the Darlington Railway, the first railway in the world. Stephenson personally drove the "Travel". The locomotive towed 12 carriages loaded with coal and flour and 20 carriages full of passengers from Ikurain and arrived safely at Darlington Station. There were 450 passengers on the train, the train load was 90 tons, and the locomotive reached a maximum speed of 20 to 24 kilometers per hour. The successful test run of the "Travel" opened up a new era of land transportation.

In 1829, Stephenson successfully developed a new locomotive "Rocket" and personally drove it to participate in racing. As a result, the Rocket won with a top speed of 46 kilometers per hour without any faults. Since then, trains have been officially used in transportation.

On August 12, 1848, he died at Chestfield, near Newcastle, at the age of 67.