Voting Station

George Stephenson

Please vote to see the next celebrity.

Inventor

The Resume

    (June 9, 1781-August 12, 1848)
    Born in Wylam, England, United Kingdom
    Civil engineer, surveyor and inventor
    Chief engineer for the Stockton & Darlington, Bolton & Leigh and Liverpool & Manchester railways
    With his son Robert, built Stephenson's Rocket, considered the most advanced locomotive of its day (1829)
    First president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (1847)
    Nicknamed 'the Father of Railways'

Why he might be annoying:

    He was illiterate until age 18.
    When Anne Henderson rejected his proposal, he married her sister Fanny.
    When he invented a miner's safety lamp, he was accused of stealing the design from chemist Sir Humphry Davy.
    He is sometimes erroneously credited with inventing the railroad locomotive, but it was actually invented by Richard Trevithick in 1802.
    Some of his early locomotive designs had to be withdrawn because they damaged the rails.
    He was let go from the Grand Junction Railway due to his casual attitude towards estimating construction costs.
    One of his less celebrated inventions: thick-walled glass tubes to grow straight cucumbers in.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He went to night school as an adult to learn reading, writing and arithmetic.
    A House of Commons committee concluded he and Davy had independently invented the safety lamp.
    He built an eight mile long colliery railway that was the first railway that used only steam locomotives with no animal power (1820).
    He developed an improved cast iron rail, learned that someone else had designed a wrought iron rail that worked even better, and immediately recommended to the Stockton & Darlington Railway that they use the wrought iron rails rather than the rail he had a patent on.
    He early on realized that the rail tracks being laid across Britain would eventually become a united network and recommended standardization of rail widths.
    He was pictured on the Bank of England's five-pound notes (1990-2003).

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 4 Votes: 25.00% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 16 Votes: 62.50% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 7 Votes: 57.14% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 4 Votes: 75.00% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 14 Votes: 57.14% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 15 Votes: 53.33% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 13 Votes: 46.15% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 27 Votes: 48.15% Annoying