Miss Jackson had a small collection of files and tools used by her brother, which she prized very much. Considering the simple tools which Jackson used (all his cog wheels being turned out with the file) he must have been a laborious worker.

His sister, who kept home for him, said that many a time after coming home from work (of course as black as the proverbial kaffir ) he would sit staring into the fire, untill [sic] midnight, nothing could move him untill he had worked out the mechanical problem on which he was thinking.

Living, of course, in the same village, he was well known to George Stevenson, who when a youngster, looked after a pumping engine at a mine further down the Tyne, and as he got older, followed the trade of engineering.

Jackson had obtained a local reputation for his wonderful cleverness, but would not leave the mines to promote himself. I suppose he was satisfied to sit in his chair and think, think, think, then work out his ideas on his little bench in a quiet corner. Stevenson, on the other hand, was pushing himself along at top speed.

Well, according to Miss Jackson, Stevenson had constructed an engine, a locomotive, which worked satisfactorily, but, as with the Puffing Billy, the first locomotive ever constructed to run on smooth rails, and made by Mr Hedley a manager of one of the Wylam coal pits, (this engine is now in South Kensington Museum) it had no means of reversing; reversing gear having not yet been invented, and had to be turned on a turntable at the end of each journey, to return. Well, Stevenson had puzzled his brain to find out some means of reversing his engine, which would be an extremely important improvement, but had entirely failed to solve the problem.

In his despair he went to Isaac Jackson, and explained his difficulty, asking Jackson if he could give him an idea as to how it could be done. Jackson thought it over, and in a few days gave Stevenson a rough sketch of a “link motion” to