The Most Powerful Idea in the World
Page 40
36 he could scarcely add to or subtract Ibid.
37 “no motion can ever act perfectly steady” Hills, Power from Steam.
38 “earliest steam-powered cotton spinning mill” Ibid.
39 somewhere north of £200,000 Tann, “Richard Arkwright and Technology.”
40 “if any man has found out a thing” “Richard Arkwright” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
41 “There sits the thief!” R. A. Burchell, The End of Anglo-America: Historical Essays in the Study of Cultural Divergence (Manchester, UK, and New York: Manchester University Press and St. Martin’s Press, 1991).
42 “the old Fox is at last caught” R. S. Fitton, The Arkwrights: Spinners of Fortune (Manchester, UK, and New York: Manchester University Press and St. Martin’s Press, 1989).
43 “If yourself or Mr. Watt think as I do” Ibid.
44 “Though I do not love Arkwright” Smiles, Lives of Boulton and Watt.
45 “I have visited Mr. Arkwright” Birmingham Central Library and Adam Matthew Publications, The Industrial Revolution: A Documentary History. Series Three: The Papers of James Watt and His Family Formerly Held at Doldowlod House.
46 “An engineer’s life without patent” Robinson and Musson, James Watt and the Steam Revolution.
47 “not as the price of a secret” Birmingham Central Library and Adam Matthew Publications, The Industrial Revolution: A Documentary History. Series Three: The Papers of James Watt and His Family Formerly Held at Doldowlod House.
48 No scientific discovery is ever named Malcolm Gladwell, “In the Air,” The New Yorker, May 12, 2008.
49 “possessed unwearied zeal” Tann, “Richard Arkwright and Technology.”
50 “A plain, almost gross” Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965).
51 “a son, brother, or orphan nephew” Tine Bruland, “Industrial Conflict as a Source of Innovation,” in MacKenzie and Wajcman, The Social Shaping of Technology: how the refrigerator got its hum.
52 In the industry’s Lancashire heartland William Lazonick, “The Self-Acting Mule and Social Relations in the Workplace,” Ibid.
53 didn’t catch on in Britain Mokyr, Lever of Riches.
54 “the last of the great inventors” Usher, “The Textile Industry, 1750–1830,” in Kranzberg and Pursell, eds., Technology in Western Civilization.
55 “as soon as Arkwright’s patent expired” Ibid.
56 In 1551 Parliament passed legislation Mokyr, Lever of Riches.
57 Not only was Richard Hargreaves’s original spinning jenny destroyed Jeff Horn, “Machine-breaking in England and France During the Age of Revolution,” Labour/Travail 55, Spring 2005.
58 Normandy in particular Ibid.
59 “the machines used in cotton-spinning” Ibid.
60 “he had favored machines” Ibid.
61 “prejudice against machinery” Ibid.
62 “collective bargaining by riot” Kevin Binfield, Writings of the Luddites (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).
63 Handloom weavers had been earning Sale, Rebels Against the Future.
64 “mee-mawing” Ibid.
65 more than half of all the land then in cultivation in England Ibid.
66 The lack of a patent Usher, History of Mechanical Inventions.
67 In the late 1770s, they petitioned Parliament Binfield, Writings of the Luddites.
68 The stockingers began in the town of Arnold Ibid.
69 The attacks continued throughout the spring Horn, “Machine-breaking in England and France During the Age of Revolution.”
70 That November, a commander Ibid.
71 “2000 men, many of them armed” Binfield, Writings of the Luddites.
72 Manchester was further down the path Ibid.
73 Manchester alone had more than three thousand men Sale, Rebels Against the Future.
74 In January, the West Riding of Yorkshire Binfield, Writings of the Luddites.
75 “Whereas by the charter” A. Aspinall and E. Anthony Smith, eds., English Historical Documents XI, 1783–1832 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959).
76 This made them not only self-interested Horn, “Machine-breaking in England and France During the Age of Revolution.”
77 “I do not mean to say, that parties of Luddites” Aspinall and Smith, eds., English Historical Documents XI, 1783–1832.
78 “You must raise your right hand” Ibid.
79 In 1813, there were 2,400 power looms Usher, “The Textile Industry 1750–1830,” in Kranzberg and Pursell, eds., Technology in Western Civilization.
80 “a steam-loom weaver” Hills, Power from Steam, quoting Baines’s 1835 History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain.
81 During the century and a half Clark, Farewell to Alms.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: WEALTH OF NATIONS
1 nothing about the forging of iron David Warsh, Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006).
2 David Ricardo predicted Clark, Farewell to Alms.
3 The second component, growth in capital Warsh, Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations.
4 Solow first assumed Ibid.
5 “the mass of persons with intermediate skills” Hobsbawm and Wrigley, Industry and Empire: from 1750 to the Present Day.
6 preindustrial Britain exhibited a fair bit F. F. Mendels, “Social mobility and phases of industrialization,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 7, 1976.
7 “craftsman’s sons became laborers” Clark, Farewell to Alms.
8 A recent World Bank analysis Kirk Hamilton, et al., Where Is the Wealth of Nations? Measuring Capital for the XXI Century (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2005).
9 India was home, in 1700 Maddison, ed., The World Economy: Historical Statistics.
10 Solow’s fundamental growth equation Warsh, Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations.
11 Kremer’s model made two assumptions Kremer, “Population Growth and Technological Change.”
12 It’s not as if Kremer was unaware Kremer, “Population Growth and Technological Change.”
13 But China had, and has, huge coal deposits Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: Europe, China, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
14 And even though the barbarian invasions Ibid.
15 Needham’s conclusion Joseph Needham, “The Pre-Natal History of the Steam Engine,” Newcomen Society Transactions 35, no. 49, 1962–63.
16 By 400 CE they had developed a system of water “levers” Mokyr, Lever of Riches.
17 “let it [the box bellows] be furnished” Ian Inkster, “Indisputable Features and Nebulous Contexts: The Steam Engine as a Global Inquisition,” History of Technology 25, 2004.
18 “The Chinese had already recognized” Pomeranz, Great Divergence.
19 The Chinese could have a bellows Kent G. Deng, “Why the Chinese Failed to Develop a Steam Engine,” History of Technology 25, 2004.
20 China’s master artisans were so severely handicapped by illiteracy Clark, Farewell to Alms.
21 The draw bar was not a complicated device Mokyr, Lever of Riches.
22 “The absence of political competition” Joseph Needham, Guohao Li, Meng-wen Chang, Tienchin Ts’ao, and Tao-ching Hu, Explorations in the History of Science and Technology in China: A Special Number of the “Collections of Essays on Chinese Literature and History” (Shanghai: Shanghai Chinese Classics, 1982).
23 Europe’s fragmented system of sovereign states E. L. Jones, The European Miracle: Environments, Economies, and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
24 Bertrand Russell translated the Chinese term Mokyr, Lever of Riches.
25 From 1600 to 1650, the Dutch government Geoffrey Parker, Europe in Crisis, 1598–1648 (Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001).
26 Petra Moser, now a professor Petra Moser, “How Do Patent La
ws Influence Innovation? Evidence from Nineteenth Century World’s Fairs,” The American Economic Review 95, no. 4, September 2005.
27 “would have been silly” Teresa Riordan, “Patents: An Economist Strolls Through History and Turns Patent Theory Upside Down,” New York Times, September 29, 2003.
28 From there on, Britain took over the lead Kenneth Romer, “Increasing Returns and Long-Run Growth,” Journal of Political Economy 94, no. 5, October 1986.
29 The most intriguing candidate N.F.R. Crafts, “Macroinventions, Economic Growth, and ‘Industrial Revolution’ in Britain and France,” Economic History Review 58, no. 3, 1995. One estimate has the Netherlands with GDP per capita of $2,130 in 1700 and $1,838 in 1820, expressed in 1990 U.S. dollars.
30 In 1789, the year of the Revolution Melvin Kranzberg, “Prerequisites for Industrialization,” in Kranzberg and Pursell, eds., Technology in Western Civilization.
31 By the same year, however Crafts, “Macroinventions, Economic Growth, and ‘Industrial Revolution’ in Britain and France.”
32 Thus, in part because of lower interest rates Kranzberg, “Prerequisites for Industrialization.”
33 Watt was simultaneously a brilliant engineer Pacey, Maze of Ingenuity.
34 Among other things, the project provided Diderot E. S. Ferguson, “The Mind’s Eye: Nonverbal Thought in Technology.”
35 “to offer craftsmen the chance to learn” Bertrand Gille, The History of Techniques (New York: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1986).
36 Between 1740 and 1780 Mokyr, Lever of Riches.
37 the French did not lionize their inventors Ibid.
38 “to deprive England of her steam engines” Carnot, quoted in Inkster, “Indisputable Features and Nebulous Contexts: The Steam Engine as a Global Inquisition.”
39 “every novel idea” Fritz Machlup, “The Patent Controversy in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Economic History 10, no. 1, May 1950.
40 From 1793 to 1800, in fact Khan, “An Economic History of Patent Institutions.”
41 “When the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars ended” Jeff Horn, The Path Not Taken: French Industrialization in the Age of Revolution, 1750–1830 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006).
42 “the Republic does not need savants” Mokyr, “The Great Synergy.” The phrase supposedly originated at Lavoisier’s trial, and it should be noted that the Académie would be reconstituted, under a different name.
CHAPTER TWELVE: STRONG STEAM
1 “I am exceedingly shocked” Birmingham Central Library and Adam Matthew Publications, The Industrial Revolution: A Documentary History. Series One: The Boulton and Watt Archive and the Matthew Boulton Papers from the Birmingham Central Library.
2 There he found himself, on behalf of the Prince-Elector Lienhard, How Invention Begins.
3 Caloric theory held that heat was latent Hills, “The Development of the Steam Engine from Watt to Stephenson,” History of Technology 25, 2004.
4 No matter how many times engineers observed Ibid.
5 “the elastic force of steam” Hills, Power from Steam.
6 Matthew Boulton himself intercepted Murdock Eugene S. Ferguson, “Steam Transportation,” in Kranzberg and Pursell, eds., Technology in Western Civilization.
7 “to grant patents for useful inventions” Kenneth W. Dobyns, The Patent Office Pony: A History of the Early Patent Office (Fredericksburg, VA: Sergeant Kirkland’s Museum and Historical Society, 1994).
8 “Each revolution of the axle tree” Thompson Westcott, Life of John Fitch, the Inventor of the Steam-boat (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1857).
9 “the exhibition yesterday” Ibid.
10 “provide limited patents” Ibid.
11 “If nature has made any one thing” S. E. Forman, The Life and Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Including All of His Important Utterances on Public Questions, Compiled from State Papers and from His Private Correspondence (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1900).
12 In 1792, the official cost of a patent Christine MacLeod, et al., “Evaluating Inventive Activity: The Cost of Nineteenth-Century UK Patents and the Fallibility of Renewal Data,” Economic History Review LVI, no. 3, Aug. 2003.
13 The cost of a U.S. patent application Khan, “An Economic History of Patent Institutions.”
14 “I have in my bed viewed the whole operation” Ferguson, “The Mind’s Eye: Nonverbal Thought in Technology.”
15 “If the bringing together under the same roof” Carroll W. Pursell, Technology in America: A History of Individuals and Ideas (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981). It should be noted that Jefferson’s complaint was as personal as it was political; in 1806, he had built his own mill, using some of the same methods as Evans, who sent the then sitting president a bill for licensing his patented technology.
16 His goal had been to earn his living “Oliver Evans” in John A. Garraty, Mark C. Carnes, and American Council of Learned Societies, American National Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
17 “Boiler with the furnace in the center” Greville Bathe and Dorothy Bathe, Oliver Evans: A Chronicle of Early American Engineering (Philadelphia: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1935).
18 “the more the steam is confined” Hills, Power from Steam, citing The Emporium of Arts and Sciences 4, 1813.
19 the first significant improvement over Watt’s linkage Eugene S. Ferguson, “Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt,” United States National Museum Bulletin 288, Paper 27, 1962.
20 “in poverty at the age of 50” Bathe and Bathe, Oliver Evans.
21 “And it shall come to pass” Ibid.
22 “the time will come” Ibid.
23 “In 1794–95, I sent drawings” Ibid.
24 “disobedient, slow, obstinate” Anthony Burton, Richard Trevithick.
25 Gilbert explained that with each stroke Kerker, “Science and the Steam Engine.”
26 “Captain Dick got up steam” Anthony Burton, Richard Trevithick.
27 Two of Trevithick’s drivers Hills, “The Development of the Steam Engine from Watt to Stephenson.”
28 One of the more avid users was the Coalbrookdale foundry “Richard Trevithick” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
29 “Mr. B. & Watt” Hills, Power from Steam.
30 Also, the grade was extremely gentle Anthony Burton, Richard Trevithick.
31 “makes the draft much stronger” L.T.C. Rolt, George and Robert Stephenson: The Railway Revolution (London: Longmans, 1960).
32 “yesterday we proceeded” National Museum of Wales, “Richard Trevithick’s Steam Locomotive,” 2008, online article at http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/rhagor/article/trevithic_loco/.
33 “My predecessors… put their boilers in the fire” Selgin and Turner, “James Watt as Intellectual Monopolist: Comment on Boldrin and Levine.”
34 By 1812, Trevithick was boasting Hills, Power from Steam.
35 Trevithick was forced to flee north “Richard Trevithick” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
36 “half-drowned, half-dead and the rest devoured by alligators.” Francis Trevithick, Life of Richard Trevithick, with an Account of His Inventions (London and New York: E. & F.N. Spon, 1872).
37 $100,000 in current dollars This is calculated as the increase in the index of average earnings, rather than the retail price index. The actual figure is approximately £66,000 a year. www.measuringworth.com/ppoweruk
38 Slightly less eyebrow-raising Rolt, George and Robert Stephenson.
39 The first common carrier to realize this Eugene S. Ferguson, “Steam Transportation,” in Kranzberg and Pursell, eds., Technology in Western Civilization.
40 “From professors of philosophy” Quoted in Rolt, George and Robert Stephenson.
41 “Rely upon it, locomotives” Archives of the Science Museum, London, at http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk∼/01.st.04
42 “the water flying in all directions” Samuel Smiles, The Life of George Stephe
nson, Railway Engineer (London: J. Murray, 1857).
43 “he had the lives of many men in him” Lawrence F. Abbott, Twelve Great Modernists: Herodotus, St. Francis, Erasmus, Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, François Millet, George Stephenson, Beethoven, Emerson, Darwin, Pasteur (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1927).
EPILOGUE: THE FUEL OF INTEREST
1 This tempted John Ericsson Lynwood Bryant, “The Role of Thermodynamics in the Evolution of Heat Engines,” Technology and Culture 14, no. 2, April 1973.
2 “if not absolutely perfect in its action” Hills, Power from Steam.
3 The ten-thousand-horsepower monster Ibid.
4 “Small changes in the parameters of the economy” Paul Krugman, “Increasing Returns and Economic Geography,” The Journal of Political Economy 99, no. 3, June 1991.
5 This is an argument starter Deepak Lal, “In Defense of Empires,” in A. J. Bacevich, ed., The Imperial Tense (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003).
6 “no nation has been very creative” D.S.L. Cardwell, Turning Points in Western Technology: A Study of Technology, Science and History (New York: Science History Publications, 1972).
7 In 1700, when Great Britain’s per capita All following statistics are drawn from Maddison, ed., The World Economy: Historical Statistics.
8 The age of scientific invention Mokyr, Lever of Riches.
9 In 1850, France alone issued Khan, “An Economic History of Patent Institutions,” EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples, March 16, 2008, at http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/khan.patents.
10 “regard discovery and invention” Ibid.
11 “It is not the man of the greatest natural vigour” Quoted in Katrina Honeyman, Origins of Enterprise: Business Leadership in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982).
12 “Man… is not the only animal who labors” Lincoln, Basler and Abraham Lincoln Association (Springfield, IL), Collected Works (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), vol. 3.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WILLIAM ROSEN, the author of the award-winning history Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe, was an editor and publisher at Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, and the Free Press for nearly twenty-five years. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey, and can be visited at www.mostpowerfulidea.com.