I still love Belgium
How Belgium changed the world
Building the first continental train
On May 5, 1835 the first railway in continental Europe opened between Brussels and Mechelen driven by a proud steam locomotive.
The British engineer George Stephenson, who visited Belgium in 1845, was very respected in Belgium for another invention: the miner’s safety lamp. Stephenson invented it at the same time as Humphry Davy , so Stephenson invention was long contested. The story is interesting, because the Royal Society had a hard time recognizing the merits of a man who had a lower education. It is the same reluctance they had for the invention of the clockmaker John Harrison who solved the longitude problem one century earlier.