Henry Maudslay & the Pioneers of the Machine Age

Henry Maudslay & the Pioneers of the Machine Age
Author: John Cantrell
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing (SC)
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2002
Genre: Engineers
ISBN: 9780752427669

In Georgian London, Henry Maudslay started an engineering works that was to become world famous, and not just for the engines it made, but also for the engineers who received their training there and went on to bigger and better things. At a time when engineering and machines were in their infancy, the designers and engineers at Maudslay's soon became famous. From Maudslay himself to Joseph Whitworth (who founded Armstrong Whitworth), David Napier (designer and builder of the first Cunard steamships), Richard Roberts (designer of power looms) and James Nasmyth (inventor of the steam hammer), the list of engineers of world repute is amazing. A fascinating study of what was the hotbed of British engineering in the early 1800s. Without these men the Industrial Revolution would not have been possible.

Engineering Empires

Engineering Empires
Author: B. Marsden
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2004-12-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0230504124

Engineers are empire-builders. Watt, Brunel, and others worked to build and expand personal and business empires of material technology and in so doing these engineers also became active agents of political and economic empire. This book provides a fascinating exploration of the cultural construction of the large-scale technologies of empire.

Forging Modernity

Forging Modernity
Author: Martin Hutchinson
Publisher: Lutterworth Press
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2023-03-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 0718896874

The Industrial Revolution provided the greatest increase in living standards the world has ever known while propelling Britain to dominance on the global stage. In Forging Modernity, Martin Hutchinson looks at how and why Britain gained this prize ahead of its European competitors. After comparing their endowments and political structures as far back as 1600, he then traces how Britain, through better policies primarily from the political Tory party, diverged from other European countries. Hutchinson's Harvard MBA allows a unique perspective on the early industrial enterprises - many successes resulted from marketing, control systems and logistics rather than from production technology alone, while on a national scale the scientific method and commercial competition were as important as physical infrastructure. By 1830, through ever-improving policies, Britain had built a staggering industrial lead, half a century ahead of its rivals. Then the Tories lost power and policy changed forever. In his conclusion, Hutchinson shows how changes welcomed by conventional historians caused the decline of Industrial Britain. Nevertheless, the policies that drove growth, ingenuity and rising living standards are still available for those bold enough to adopt them.

James Watt

James Watt
Author: Ben Russell
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2014-08-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1780234023

Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer James Watt (1736–1819) is best known for his pioneering work on the steam engine that became fundamental to the incredible changes and developments wrought by the Industrial Revolution. But in this new biography, Ben Russell tells a much bigger, richer story, peering over Watt’s shoulder to more fully explore the processes he used and how his ephemeral ideas were transformed into tangible artifacts. Over the course of the book, Russell reveals as much about the life of James Watt as he does a history of Britain’s early industrial transformation and the birth of professional engineering. To record this fascinating narrative, Russell draws on a wide range of resources—from archival material to three-dimensional objects to scholarship in a diversity of fields from ceramics to antique machine-making. He explores Watt’s early years and interest in chemistry and examines Watt’s partnership with Matthew Boulton, with whom he would become a successful and wealthy man. In addition to discussing Watt’s work and incredible contributions that changed societies around the world, Russell looks at Britain’s early industrial transformation. Published in association with the Science Museum London, and with seventy illustrations, James Watt is not only an intriguing exploration of the engineer’s life, but also an illuminating journey into the broader practices of invention in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Published in association with the Science Museum, London

The Age of Machinery

The Age of Machinery
Author: Gillian Cookson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2018
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

An engagingly written account of textile engineering in its key northern centres, rich with historical narrative and analysis. The engineers who built the first generations of modern textile machines, between 1770 and 1850, pushed at the boundaries of possibility. This book investigates these pioneering machine-makers, almost all working within textile communities in northern England, and the industry they created. It probes their origins and skills, the sources of their inspiration and impetus, and how it was possible to develop a high-tech, factory-centred, world-leading marketin textile machinery virtually from scratch. The story of textile engineering defies classical assumptions about the driving forces behind the Industrial Revolution. The circumstances of its birth, and the personal affiliationsat work during periods of exceptional creativity, suggest that the potential to accelerate economic growth could be found within social assets and craft skills. Appreciating textile engineering within its own time and context challenges views inherited from Victorian thinkers, who tended to ascribe to it features of the fully fledged industry they saw before them. The Age of Machinery is an engagingly written account of the trade in its key northern centres, devoid of jargon and yet tightly argued, equally rich with historical narrative and analysis. It will be invaluable not only to students and scholars of British economic history and the Industrial Revolution but also tosocial scientists looking at human agency and its contribution to economic growth and innovation. GILLIAN COOKSON holds a DPhil in economic history and has been employed since 1995 in academic research and consultancy, including as county editor, Victoria County History of Durham.

The Singularity of Western Innovation

The Singularity of Western Innovation
Author: Leonard Dudley
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2017-08-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1137398221

This book highlights the contribution of language standardization to the economic rise of the West between 1600 and 1860. Previous studies have been unable to explain why during this period almost all industrial innovation was confined to small areas around the main cultural centers of three Western states – Britain, France, and the United states. This book argues that Western Europe and its offshoots were the only Eurasian societies able to apply typography cheaply to their writing systems. The emergence in the West of large networks of people able to communicate in standardized languages made possible the breakthroughs of the Industrial Revolution. Military byproducts of three “macro-innovations”– the steam engine, machine tools, and interchangeable parts – then constituted the West’s toolbox for empire. The book will appeal to readers seeking to explain how the West attained its unprecedented advance over Asia in the nineteenth century, and why this lead has since proved temporary.

Iron Men

Iron Men
Author: David Waller
Publisher: Anthem Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2016-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1783085460

In the early nineteenth century, Henry Maudslay, an engineer from a humble background, opened a factory in Westminster Bridge Road, a stone’s throw from the Thames. His workshop became in its day the equivalent of Google and Apple combined, attracting the country’s best in engineering talent. Their story of innovation and ambition tells how precision engineering made the industrial revolution possible, helping Great Britain become the workshop of the world.

Coal, Steam and Ships

Coal, Steam and Ships
Author: Crosbie Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 473
Release: 2018-07-05
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1108186912

Crosbie Smith explores the trials and tribulations of first-generation Victorian mail steamship lines, their passengers, proprietors and the public. Eyewitness accounts show in rich detail how these enterprises engineered their ships, constructed empire-wide systems of steam navigation and won or lost public confidence in the process. Controlling recalcitrant elements within and around steamship systems, however, presented constant challenges to company managers as they attempted to build trust and confidence. Managers thus wrestled to control shipbuilding and marine engine-making, coal consumption, quality and supply, shipboard discipline, religious readings, relations with the Admiralty and government, anxious proprietors, and the media - especially following a disaster or accident. Emphasizing interconnections between maritime history, the history of engineering and Victorian culture, Smith's innovative history of early ocean steamships reveals the fraught uncertainties of Victorian life on the seas.

Great Divergence and Great Convergence

Great Divergence and Great Convergence
Author: Leonid Grinin
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2015-05-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 331917780X

This new monograph provides a stimulating new take on hotly contested topics in world modernization and the globalizing economy. It begins by situating what is called the Great Divergence--the social/technological revolution that led European nations to outpace the early dominance of Asia--in historical context over centuries. This is contrasted with an equally powerful Great Convergence, the recent economic and technological expansion taking place in Third World nations and characterized by narrowing inequity among nations. They are seen here as two phases of an inevitable global process, centuries in the making, with the potential for both positive and negative results. This sophisticated presentation examines: Why the developing world is growing more rapidly than the developed world. How this development began occurring under the Western world's radar. How former colonies of major powers grew to drive the world's economy. Why so many Western economists have been slow to recognize the Great Convergence. The increasing risk of geopolitical instability. Why the world is likely to find itself without an absolute leader after the end of the American hegemony A work of rare scope, Great Divergence and Great Convergence gives sociologists, global economists, demographers, and global historians a deeper understanding of the broader movement of social and economic history, combined with a long view of history as it is currently being made; it also offers some thrilling forecasts for global development in the forthcoming decades.

Structures of Change in the Mechanical Age

Structures of Change in the Mechanical Age
Author: Ross Thomson
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2009-05-08
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0801896622

The United States registered phenomenal economic growth between the establishment of the new republic and the end of the Civil War. Ross Thomson's fresh study accounts for the unprecedented technological innovations that helped propel antebellum growth. Thomson argues that the transition of the United States from an agrarian economy in 1790 to an industrial leader in 1865 relied fundamentally on the spread of technological knowledge within and across industries. Essential to this spread was a dense web of knowledge-diffusing institutions—new occupations and industries, the patent office, machine shops, mechanics’ associations, scientific societies, public colleges, and the civil engineering profession. Together they composed an integrated innovation system that generated, disseminated, and employed new technical knowledge across ever-widening ranges of the economy. To trace technological change in fourteen major industries and the economy as a whole, Thomson analyzes 14,000 patents, the records of two dozen machinery firms, census data for 1,800 companies, and hundreds of business directories. This exhaustive research leads to his interesting interpretation of technological diffusion and development. Thomson's impressive study of the infrastructure that fueled and supported the young country’s economic and industrial successes will interest students of economic, technological, and business history.