Midnight Ride, Industrial Dawn

by Robert Martello

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Becoming Industrial

  Technological Innovations and Environmental Implications (1802–1811)

  Following a few early years of trials and errors, Revere’s copper sheets earned universal praise, often from lofty sources. In May 1803 well-respected Captain Edward Preble of the USS Constitution informed the secretary of the navy that the Constitution’s copper sheathing was worn out and needed replacing, and “that made by Mr. Revere, is good, and of proper thickness.” This endorsement echoed Revere’s strong reputation among the merchants and shipbuilders of Boston. After he received a contract to replace the Constitution’s sheet copper, a June 18, 1803 article in the Columbian Centinel stated that Revere’s sheeting “is the first ever manufactured in the United States, and will not suffer by comparison with the best sheets imported.” And on June 25, 1803, the USS Constitution’s logbook recorded, “The carpenters gave nine cheers, which were answered by the seamen and caulkers because they had in fourteen days completed coppering the ship with copper made in the States.”1 Apparently Revere was not the only person who believed his successful mastery of copper rolling constituted an important national service, and public praise, among other factors, motivated his aggressive efforts to improve and expand his business.

  The Canton mill’s transformation in the early nineteenth century led to great strides toward standardization, an expanded product line, greater overall output, and an increased reliance upon natural resources such as raw materials, fossil fuels, and waterpower. Revere’s operations had become a fairly advanced technological system by this point. Recall that a technological system represents a combination of physical artifacts such as machinery or buildings, administrative components such as company policies or lawyers, intellectual property and proprietary knowledge, legislative resources such as favorable tariffs or laws, and accessible natural resources. System-building inventors and entrepreneurs often begin by inventing a single revolutionary technology but develop that technology into a larger system incorporating more of the above components in an attempt to improve its productivity and better achieve its goals.2 This theory sheds light on the new challenges Revere faced in the final years of his career when his small manufactory’s success raised new technical and organizational challenges. Without technological improvements, productivity increases usually result from the application of additional resources into a system, which typically offers benefits in proportion to the added expenditures. For example, the easiest way to produce more copper sheets is to hire more laborers, buy more copper, use more waterpower, and build more of the same type of rolling mill. People operating within the confines of a system generally view the future of their system in these terms, extrapolating future increases from present circumstances. Technological changes, however, have the potential to rewrite the rules of the system and enable potentially exponential gains in productivity and efficiency. The ability to learn from others or innovate new methods becomes essential for continuing growth.3

  Even though his mill already produced quality sheeting, Revere continued learning new techniques throughout the final years of his career. He improved his equipment, processes, and products in order to expand the reach, efficiency, and standardization of his technological system, but technical changes were merely the tip of the iceberg. Inevitably, his growing manufactory increased its impact upon the local and remote natural resources that sustained it, inspiring an array of technical, managerial, and even regulatory responses. Revere eventually found himself embroiled once again with the federal government, as well as with the local courts, and his struggles in both arenas foreshadowed larger changes facing the increasingly industrial republic.

  Technical Practices and Improvements

  Of all the cutting-edge technologies in 1800, metalworking had the greatest impact on technological development, for example, by giving rise to machine construction and precision manufacturing.4 Even among the highly skilled practitioners of this advanced field, Revere was one of the most accomplished metallurgists in America. His ever-increasing workload, glowing reviews, and knowledgeable advice-laden letters to clients and colleagues attest to his combination of scientific awareness and practical know-how. Although some of his valuable background in different technical fields soon grew obsolete in the dramatic industrial expansion of the nineteenth century, his experimental spirit fueled his drive for improvement and further benefited from his son’s fresh new perspective. By the time of his Canton endeavors, he had put aside his earlier career-jumping attempts at social climbing to wholeheartedly focus upon manufacturing, and as soon as he moved all of his different mechanical operations under one roof he began altering earlier production methods and incorporating new pieces of equipment. Revere remained the master of technology transfer, and used all available methods to continue his drive toward standardization. Many factors aid technological development, including assistance from governments in the form of patents or bounties; transfer of tools, blueprints, and skilled workers from more advanced societies; and innovations emerging from the inventive activity of native practitioners. In turn-of-the-century America the actions of the small and inexperienced government proved less significant than each manufacturer’s ability to exploit the knowledge of available skilled workers while learning as much as possible from the example set by Britain.

  Many turn-of-the-century Americans shared Revere’s emphasis upon technological improvement. Government leaders such as Tench Coxe and Alexander Hamilton wrote at length about the need to foster inventive activity and help America close the technological gap with Britain. Widespread belief in “Yankee ingenuity” and American enterprise, combined with general outrage at Britain’s well-known efforts to retain a monopoly on all of its advanced technological know-how, fueled the call for public support of practical experimentation and the dissemination of relevant knowledge. After the failure to adopt many of the suggestions in Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures, the government relied upon the age-old practice of patents, even though this idea had its own controversies.

  Rudimentary patents first appeared in the late medieval period, and took on a more modern form by the nineteenth century. According to patent theory, inventors need rewards and support to most efficiently advance their nations’ technology, and states can inexpensively offer this support by giving inventors monopolistic control over the right to realize profits from their inventions. But patent theory raised a conflict between rewarding an inventor and disseminating the invention in a way that benefited society as a whole. Some groups, such as the London Society of Arts, opposed any form of secret withholding of knowledge, and required their members to refuse patents for their inventions. Patents also angered anyone who opposed monopolies.5

  U.S. patent law rewards inventors by granting them a short-term monopoly that they can convert into profit either by being the only manufacturer of their patented device or by selling the patent rights to others. In this way a patent creates intellectual property, by converting an idea into something that can be owned or sold. The patent office also publicizes the patent after approving it, allowing others to make legal use of it when the monopoly period expires. After its passage in 1790, the patent system attempted to fulfill republican ideology by rewarding both the inventors and their society. Unfortunately, patents did not work as originally intended, particularly in the early days, when a complex examination process bogged down the system. Under the initial Patent Act of 1790 the secretary of state, secretary of war, or attorney general had to examine each patent claim, an extremely time-consuming and untenable process. The revised act of 1793 went too far in the other direction by merely registering each claim and allowing the courts to untangle the truth and merit of each invention. Courts had a difficult time weighing competing technical claims against each other, and some patent applications complicated the process by making overly broad assertions about relatively minor improvements. Even worse, for a long time inventors received minimal protection after recei
ving a patent. For example, Eli Whitney’s patented cotton gin was so easy to copy that duplicates appeared all over the South and Whitney spent more money in lawsuits than he ever made in profits. And early steamboat inventors John Fitch, James Rumsey, and John Stevens all received patents for similar steamboat inventions and did not receive any protection or support from them. The patent system also oversimplified the process of technological innovation by identifying a single inventor and ignoring all of the prior work, collaborators, laborers, or other parts of the network that aided its success. A third patent act in 1836 finally resolved these difficulties by establishing a patent office. At any rate the patent system did nothing to address the scarcity of capital believed to be limiting inventions in the first place.6

  Revere knew of the existence of patents, as demonstrated in his letter to Josiah Quincy during the tariff controversy described earlier: “If we had whished for an exclusive right we should have applied for it when we erected our works, had we then done it we have no doubt the government would have granted it. It was as much a new invention as any thing for which patents have been granted by our government.”7 In forgoing his right to receive patent protection, Revere again found a way to combine ideology and practicality. His lifetime of technological knowledge sharing did not endear him to a system that made this information proprietary. More pragmatically, a patent did little good at a time when other Americans lacked the ability to implement the copper-rolling process, as illustrated by Benjamin Stoddert’s costly and unsuccessful funding attempts.

  America’s support of entrepreneurship took off after the Revolution when state governments and eventually the federal government promoted laws and policies strongly supporting practical improvements and inventions, unlike many British laws favoring tradition and property rights. America’s manufacturing innovations multiplied in the decades after 1790 thanks to favorable factors such as communication and transportation infrastructure, technical knowledge accumulation, stronger technical communities willing to exchange information, readily available land for manufacturing establishments, and a growing labor force comfortable with machine operation. The concentration of skilled practitioners in urban centers favored new endeavors, as entrepreneurs could discuss financing options with local bankers, consult relevant books, read newspapers from any city in the nation, or brainstorm technical options with experienced workers.8

  The biggest changes to technical systems result from the countless incremental improvements to equipment and procedures made by large numbers of practitioners over a long period of time. This ongoing inventive adaptation requires great creativity and effort, and can produce tremendous results. Americans proved adept at technological improvement thanks in part to workers’ ability to perceive possibilities and opportunities, which depends upon their preexisting knowledge and experiences. Early Americans lived in a turbulent society, characterized by continuing migration, fluid communities, and ample opportunities to enter a new field or start a new life in a different region. Many Americans became jacks of all trades and made connections across different disciplines. Managerial styles also affected worker innovation. Many managers maintained casual shops that encouraged conversation and the free exchange of techniques even at a cost to short-term productivity, while tightly managed shops might feature great regularity of production at the cost of conversation and experimentation. British consul Phineas Bond commented on the limits and promise of American textile manufactories: although he realized that America was “essentially deficient in those main sinews of advancement, money, artificers, and fit utensils,” he shrewdly recognized the importance of incremental improvements and correctly divined the way of things to come, concluding that “still their exertions are made with great zeal and the improvements tho’ small are progressive.”9

  Revere and his workers altered many aspects of their production processes over the years to improve product quality and respond to changing demand. The vast majority of these alterations were subtle and unrecorded, only made visible through a study of the ways copper sheets and other products changed over the years, for example, by taking on different dimensions or receiving fewer customer complaints. Trial and error, aided by on-the-job experience, undoubtedly enabled Revere to make these improvements, but he also did his best to accelerate the learning process by going straight to the source. Along with many of his colleagues, dating back to colonial days, Revere tried his best to obtain technological knowledge and materials from England.

  In spite of strict British laws prohibiting technology transfer, numerous American individuals and firms, encouraged by local and federal governments, relied on English expertise to learn new processes or improve existing ones. Particularly in the textile field a large number of machines and skilled laborers were smuggled out of the country and put to work in America. The emigration of skilled labor soon became the stereotypical representation of technology transfer, even though it did not apply to all industries.10 As far as their origins can be determined with any certainty, none of Revere’s employees came from Britain. This is not from want of trying. In 1802 he wrote to Mr. Bennoch, a former Bostonian who now lived in England. This long, detailed, mouse-eaten letter paints a vivid picture of Revere’s limitations and concerns. He started with a summary of his product line, and mentioned that he had failed to find any information about the “English Method of Roling” in books or other information sources. And even though he had already rolled more than two thousand sheets that the “Inspectors appointed by our Government” declared “equal in quality to the English,” Revere confessed that he still could not “finish it in the high stile that they do.” Revere hypothesized that his difficulties might be attributable to the iron rolls he cast and turned himself, which he considered too soft for the task at hand. Revere asked Bennoch to procure rolls from Bristol, Liverpool, or anywhere he believed he could find quality workmanship. He also announced “I should be glad to give good wages to a Man aquainted with the business.” Furthermore, Revere specifically sought more information about the British copper-rolling process, such as “the size & thickness of the pieces when first put into the Roles; what kind of Furnace or Oven they Aneal their Copper in; wether they role it single, or double; to what length they role it hot; & when they role it cold, wether they role it in water, and particularly how they clean it for finishing.”11 These questions illustrate Revere’s progress in his industry: he possessed a basic knowledge of the equipment and procedures but had many questions about specific details. Since Bennoch never responded to this letter, most of these questions had to wait until Joseph Warren returned from his European travels three years later.

  Revere’s letter to Bennoch alluded to one critical component of his early rolling success. He not only had to learn the rolling process without any assistance, but also had to procure the necessary equipment. Americans understood waterwheel technology, but iron rollers presented a particular challenge since they had to be hard, durable, perfectly round, and free from blemishes. Instead of having to rely upon the limited and illegal availability of British rollers, Revere could cast and turn his own when the British supply dried up. His rollers were not perfect, but they functioned. In the period before machine-making shops made specialized equipment widely available, familiarity with ironworking techniques greatly aided Revere’s copper-rolling success.12 Over the years, Revere ordered rollers from firms in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Liverpool, England, and other locations whenever he needed to produce wider sheets or replace worn or broken parts. His instructions to each of these firms emphasized the need to match his exact specifications and use the highest-quality iron. In some cases he probably had greater ironworking expertise than the firm he contacted.

  In the early 1800s Revere’s technology transfer from England emphasized several indirect activities: occasional purchases of iron rollers from Liverpool, a letter to Bennoch that failed to produce a response, and the ability to reverse-engineer pieces of British sheet copper for use as comparisons aga
inst his own output. Indirectness ended in 1804, when Revere decided to initiate the boldest possible form of technology transfer. Four months after becoming the junior partner of Revere and Son, 27-year-old Joseph Warren Revere sailed to Britain to begin a yearlong overseas trip. Although he posed as a tourist and made a fair number of pleasure trips, he and his father had an ulterior motive. Joseph Warren was an industrial spy, perhaps the first in America’s history, and planned to visit the major copperworks in Britain and northern Europe to learn their methods and study their equipment. By the end of his travels, he had studied plants in England, France, Holland, Denmark, and Sweden.