In England, transportation had improved a great deal during the years before 1830, but moving heavy materials, particularly coal, remained a problem. It is therefore significant that the first modern railway, built in 1825 for the transportation of coal, ran from the Durham coal field of Stockton to Darlington near the coast. Coal had traditionally been transported short distances via tramways, or tracks along which horses pulled coal carts. The Stockton-to-Darlington railway was a logical extension of a tramway, designed to answer the transportation needs arising from constantly expanding industrialization. The man primarily responsible for the design of the first steam railway was George Stephenson, a self-educated engineer who had not learned to read until he was seventeen. The locomotives on the Stockton- Darlington line travelled at fifteen miles an hour, the fastest rate at which machines had yet moved goods overland. Soon they would move people as well, transforming transportation in the process.