British Banknotes 5 Pound Sterling note 1990 George Stephenson
Bank of England
Obverse: Portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at right. On the left side is a hologram window with sitting Britannia (as logo of Bank of England). Denominations in numerals are in top corners. In center in words. Signatures: George Malcolm Gill, Chief Cashier of the Bank of England.
Reverse: Portrait of George Stephenson (9 June 1781 – 12 August 1848) was an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer who built the first public inter-city railway line in the world to use steam locomotives, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway which opened in 1830. Renowned as the "Father of Railways". His rail gauge of 4 feet 8 1⁄2 inches (1,435 mm), sometimes called "Stephenson gauge", is the standard gauge by name and by convention for most of the world's railways.
On the left side, on foreground, is Stephenson's Rocket locomotive 1829. On the background (left side) is the opening procession of the Stockton and Darlington Railway crosses the Skerne bridge 1825. Denomination in numeral is in top left corner. In center in words.
Watermark: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in young age.
The Historical series are so called because they feature a famous historical character and appropriate scenes on the reverse. The £5 was first issued on 7th June 1990, and the £20 on 5th June 1991. They remain the current notes in circulation today (1999). The £10 was first issued on 29th April 1992, and the £50 on 20th April 1994. The £50 note incorporates an additional security device in the form of a foil Tudor rose and medallion.
In preparation for the "E Series" of notes, issued by the Bank of England, photographs of The Queen were especially commissioned by the Bank. The photographs were taken by Don Ford in 1985-1986, one of the Bank’s technical photographers, under the direction of Roger Withington. Mr. Withington designed the notes of the "E Series" and prepared the engraving of the Queen, which appeared on this series of notes, from one of the photographs taken by Mr. Ford. The portrait shows Queen Elizabeth wearing Queen Mary’s "Girls of Great Britain and Ireland" Tiara, Queen Alexandra’s cluster earrings and, although difficult to identify, Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee necklace.
5 Pounds George Stephenson 10 Pounds Charles Dickens
20 Pounds Michael Faraday 50 Pounds Sir John Houblon
20 Pounds Michael Faraday 50 Pounds Sir John Houblon
The new series of notes. The £20 was first issued on 1st January 1999, and the £10 on 7th November 2000. The £10 note is the first to have the metallic security thread 'windowed' on the reverse rather than the front of the note.
George Stephenson
George Stephenson (born June 9, 1781, Wylam, Northumberland, England - died Aug. 12, 1848, Chesterfield, Derbyshire), English engineer and principal inventor of the railroad locomotive.
Stephenson was the son of a mechanic who operated a Newcomen atmospheric-steam engine that was used to pump out a coal mine at Newcastle upon Tyne. The boy went to work at an early age and without formal schooling; by age 19 he was operating a Newcomen engine. His curiosity aroused by the Napoleonic war news, he enrolled in night school and learned to read and write. He soon married and, in order to earn extra income, learned to repair shoes, fix clocks, and cut clothes for miners’ wives, getting a mechanic friend, the future Sir William Fairbairn, to take over his engine part-time. His genius with steam engines, however, presently won him the post of engine wright (chief mechanic) at Killingworth colliery.
Stephenson’s first wife died, leaving him with a young son, Robert, whom he sent to a Newcastle school to learn mathematics; every night when the boy came home, father and son went over the homework together, both learning. In 1813 George Stephenson visited a neighbouring colliery to examine a “steam boiler on wheels” constructed by John Blenkinsop to haul coal out of the mines. In the belief that the heavy contraption could not gain traction on smooth wooden rails, Blenkinsop had given it a ratchet wheel running on a cogged third rail, an arrangement that created frequent breakdowns. Stephenson thought he could do better, and, after conferring with Lord Ravensworth, the principal owner of Killingworth, he built the Blucher, an engine that drew eight loaded wagons carrying 30 tons of coal at 4 miles (6 km) per hour. Not satisfied, he sought to improve his locomotive’s power and introduced the “steam blast,” by which exhaust steam was redirected up the chimney, pulling air after it and increasing the draft. The new design made the locomotive truly practical.
Over the next few years, Stephenson built several locomotives for Killingworth and other collieries and gained a measure of fame by inventing a mine-safety lamp. In 1821 he heard of a project for a railroad, employing draft horses, to be built from Stockton to Darlington to facilitate exploitation of a rich vein of coal. At Darlington he interviewed the promoter, Edward Pease, and so impressed him that Pease commissioned him to build a steam locomotive for the line. On Sept. 27, 1825, railroad transportation was born when the first public passenger train, pulled by Stephenson’s Active (later renamed Locomotion), ran from Darlington to Stockton, carrying 450 persons at 15 miles (24 km) per hour. Liverpool and Manchester interests called him in to build a 40-mile (64-kilometre) railroad line to connect the two cities. To survey and construct the line, Stephenson had to outwit the violent hostility of farmers and landlords who feared, among other things, that the railroad would supplant horse-drawn transportation and shut off the market for oats.
When the Liverpool-Manchester line was nearing completion in 1829, a competition was held for locomotives; Stephenson’s new engine, the Rocket, which he built with his son, Robert, won with a speed of 36 miles (58 km) per hour. Eight locomotives were used when the Liverpool-Manchester line opened on Sept. 15, 1830, and all of them had been built in Stephenson’s Newcastle works. From this time on, railroad building spread rapidly throughout Britain, Europe, and North America, and George Stephenson continued as the chief guide of the revolutionary transportation medium, solving problems of roadway construction, bridge design, and locomotive and rolling-stock manufacture. He built many other railways in the Midlands, and he acted as consultant on many railroad projects at home and abroad.
Stephenson's Rocket locomotive
Stephenson's Rocket was an early steam locomotive of 0-2-2 wheel arrangement, designed by Robert Stephenson in 1829. It was built for and won the Rainhill Trials held by the Liverpool & Manchester Railway in 1829 to choose the best design to power the railway.
Though the Rocket was not the first steam locomotive, it was the first to bring together several innovations to produce the most advanced locomotive of its day.
It was built at the Forth Street Works of Robert Stephenson and Company in Newcastle upon Tyne. It is the most famous example of an evolving design of locomotives by Stephenson that became the template for most steam engines in the following 150 years.
The locomotive was preserved and is now on display in the Science Museum in London.
The locomotive had a tall smokestack chimney at the front, a cylindrical boiler in the middle, and a separate firebox at the rear. The large front pair of wooden wheels was driven by two external cylinders set at an angle. The smaller rear wheels were not coupled to the driving wheels, giving an 0-2-2 wheel arrangement.
Stephenson designed Rocket for the Rainhill trials, and the specific rules of that contest. As the first railway intended for passengers more than freight, the rules emphasised speed and would require reliability, but the weight of the locomotive was also tightly restricted. Six-wheeled locomotives were limited to six tons, four-wheeled locomotives to four and a half tons. In particular, the weight of the train expected to be hauled was to be no more than three times the actual weight of the locomotive. Stephenson realized that whatever the size of previously successful locomotives, this new contest would favour a fast, light locomotive of only moderate hauling power.
Stockton and Darlington Railway
The Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR) was a railway company that operated in north-east England from 1825 to 1863. The world's first public railway to use steam locomotives, its first line connected collieries near Shildon with Stockton-on-Tees and Darlington, and was officially opened on 27 September 1825. The movement of coal to ships rapidly became a lucrative business, and the line was soon extended to a new port and town at Middlesbrough. Passengers were carried in coaches drawn by horses until carriages hauled by steam locomotives were introduced in 1833.
The S&DR was involved in the building of the East Coast Main Line between York and Darlington, but its main expansion was at Middlesbrough Docks and west into Weardale and east to Redcar. It suffered severe financial difficulties at the end of the 1840s and was nearly taken over by the York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway, before the discovery of iron ore in Cleveland and the subsequent increase in revenue meant it could pay its debts. At the beginning of the 1860 it took over railways that had crossed the Pennines to join the West Coast Main Line at Tebay and Clifton, near Penrith.
The company was taken over by the North Eastern Railway in 1863, transferring 200 route miles (320 km) of line and about 160 locomotives, but continued to operate independently as the Darlington Section until 1876. The opening of the S&DR was seen as proof of the effectiveness of steam railways and its anniversary was celebrated in 1875, 1925 and 1975. Much of the original route is now served by the Tees Valley Line, operated by Northern Rail.
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