382 Thomas Quigley The history of the railway, and the progress and influence of the railway, follows the same curve as the rise of computerization in the late twentieth century. Technology was invented, further developed, and speedily put in place. The ›old‹ and the ›new‹ never seemed so distinct from each other. As William Thackeray said in his essay » De Juventute « :We who have lived before railways, were made to belong to another world. It was only yesterday, but what a gulf between now and then! Then was the old world. Stage-coaches, more or less swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highway-men, knights in armor, Norman invaders, Roman legions, Druids, Ancient Britons painted blue, and so forth — all these belong to the old period. But your railroad starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one. We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark.9 Britain led the world in the development of railways, and while George Stephenson cannot claim to have invented the locomotive — Richard Trevithick deserves that credit in 1804 — it was Stephenson‘s building of a locomotive called ›Locomotion‹ in 1825 for the Stockton and Darlington Railway (40 kms.) which was the first public steam railway in the world. It was Stephenson’s successful work on ›The Rocket‹ in 1829 that led to Stephenson establishing his company as the pre-eminent builder of steam locomotives used on railways in the United Kingdom, the United States and much of Europe. Stephenson was also farsighted in realising that the individual lines being built would eventually join together, and would need to have the same gauge. The standard gauge used throughout much of the world is due to him.10 In Germany the first working steam locomotive was built in 6.1816 by Johann Friedrich Krigar in the Königliche Eisengießerei zu Berlin. It was designed along English lines, and the locomotive ran on a circular track in the factory yard. It was the first locomotive to be built on the European mainland and the first steam-powered passenger service, because curious onlookers could ride in the attached coaches for a fee. The first steam railway in Germany began service on 7.12.1835, with service offered between Nuremberg and Fürth on the Bayerische Ludwigs-eisenbahn (11 kms.). Its locomotive, the ›Adler‹, was the 118th engine from the locomotive works of Robert Stephenson (George’s son) and stood under patent protection. The first German long-distance railway line was built between Leipzig and Dresden in 1839, by the Leipzig-Dresdner Eisenbahn-Compagnie.11 9 William M. Thackeray: Roundabout Papers, London; New York, 1863, <http://www.pagebypage-books.com/William_ Makepeace_ Thackeray/Some_ Roundabout_ Papers/De_ Juventute_ p6.html>, 27.6.2011. 10 George Stephenson, in: Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_ Stephenson>, 27.6.2011; Steam Locomotive, in: Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_ locomotive>, 27.6.2011.11 Steam Locomotive, in: Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_ locomotive>, 27.6.2011. See also Ralf Roth: Interactions between Railways and Cities in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Some Case Studies, in: The City and The Railway in Europe, (= Historical Urban Studies), Ralf Roth and Marie-Noëlle Polino, eds., Burlington VT and Aldershot 2003, p. 3—28.