Copy Book Archive

Burning Daylight George Stephenson argued that his steam engines were solar-powered.
before 1848
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Music: Ignaz Moscheles

© Stephen Daglish, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0. Source

About this picture …

“Let’s go, we’re burnin’ daylight!” was the catchphrase of Wil Andersen, played by John Wayne, in ‘The Cowboys’ (1972), a very literary allusion inasmuch as ‘we burn daylight’ (i.e. ‘we’re wasting time’) goes back to William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and The Merry Wives of Windsor, not to mention John Dryden’s The Maiden Queen. The picture above shows the Tanfield Railway in County Durham, one of the oldest railways still in operation anywhere in the world. The railway was itself built to carry coal to the Tyne, for shipping to London. Stephenson lived and worked in the area most of his life.

Burning Daylight
Today’s enthusiasts for ‘renewable energy’ have brought Britain’s once-mighty coal industry to an end. Yet judging by George Stephenson’s exchange with William Buckland, the eccentric but brilliant Oxford geologist, there may have been a serious misunderstanding...
Abridged

ONE Sunday, when the party had just returned from church, they were standing together on the terrace near the Hall, and observed in the distance a railway-train flashing along, tossing behind its long white plume of steam. “Now, Buckland,” said Stephenson, “Can you tell me what is the power that is driving that train?”

“Well,” said the other, “I suppose it is one of your big engines.”

“But what drives the engine?”

“Oh, very likely a canny Newcastle driver.”*

“What do you say to the light of the sun?”

“How can that be?” asked the doctor.

“It is nothing else,” said the engineer, “it is light bottled up in the earth for tens of thousands of years, — light, absorbed by plants and vegetables, — and now, after being buried in the earth for long ages in fields of coal, that latent light is again brought forth and liberated, made to work as in that locomotive, for great human purposes.”

This was a little joke at Stephenson’s expense, a proud son of Northumberland. (They were actually in Derbyshire, guests of Sir Robert Peel, the former Prime Minister.) In the North East, ‘canny’ doesn’t mean ‘shrewd’ as it does elsewhere; it means ‘likeable, good company’.

Précis

In conversation with William Buckland, the noted geologist, George Stephenson asked what his companion thought was the fuel for steam locomotives. After a little teasing on both sides, Stephenson made the serious point that coal, as carbonized vegetation, is stored-up sunlight, and that trains are effectively solar-powered. (47 / 60 words)

Source

Abridged from The Lives of the Engineers by Samuel Smiles (1812-1904).

Suggested Music

Study for piano in D major, Op. 70 No. 13

Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870)

Performed by Loredana Brigandi.

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How To Use This Passage

You can use this passage to help improve your command of English.

IRead it aloud, twice or more. IISummarise it in one sentence of up to 30 words. IIISummarise it in one paragraph of 40-80 words. IVMake notes on the passage, and reconstruct the original from them later on. VJot down any unfamiliar words, and make your own sentences with them later. VIMake a note of any words that surprise or impress you, and ask yourself what meaning they add to the words you would have expected to see. VIITurn any old-fashioned English into modern English. VIIITurn prose into verse, and verse into prose. IXAsk yourself what the author is trying to get you to feel or think. XHow would an artist or a photographer capture the scene? XIHow would a movie director shoot it, or a composer write incidental music for it?

For these and more ideas, see How to Use The Copy Book.

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