Robert Stephenson and Company was a locomotive manufacturing company founded in 1823 in Forth Street, Newcastle upon Tyne in England. It was the first company in the world created specifically to build railway engines. Famous early locomotives were Locomotion No. 1 and Rocket. By 1899, 3,000 locomotives had been built at the Forth Street site, and a new company was formed, Robert Stephenson and Company Limited, and the Darlington works was opened. In 1937, the company merged with Hawthorn Leslie to form Robert Stephenson and Hawthorns. In 1944, they became part of English Electric.