James Watt: steam engine

How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It

by Arthur Herman  · 27 Nov 2001  · 510pp  · 163,449 words

” William Wallace and Robert the Bruce; the Arbroath Declaration and Mary Queen of Scots; Robert Burns and Bonnie Prince Charlie. They point out how James Watt invented the steam engine, John Boyd Dunlop the bicycle tire, and Alexander Fleming penicillin. Yet no one else seems to pay much attention. Scots often complain that Scotland

…

polite, humane, enlightened culture. This intermingling of the practical and the intellectual was in fact a keynote of the Glasgow Enlightenment. It explains why engineer James Watt, who helped build Scotland’s first dry dock at Port Glasgow in 1762, was just as highly regarded by university professors such as Adam Smith

…

to get things done. Older attitudes, including a deep-rooted Calvinism, were stronger there, but thanks to its commercial success, it was also more freewheeling. James Watt, engineer and self-taught philosopher, was a natural in Glasgow. He would have seemed a fish out of water in Edinburgh. Edinburgh was more artistic

…

to gratify our needs. Eventually, Smith states, the division of labor produces people who do nothing but think about improvements: engineers such as his friends James Watt and Alexander Wilson, scientists such as Joseph Black, and those “whose trade it is not to do anything, but to observe everything”—philosophers, teachers, and

…

nation’s memory, and help to nourish its posterity. CHAPTER TWELVE Practical Matters: Scots in Science and Industry Don’t think, try. —John Hunter I James Watt was instrument maker for the University of Glasgow when someone told him about a strange machine created by a Derbyshire man named Thomas Newcomen: a

…

the cylinder. . . . I had not walked farther than the golf-house when the whole thing was arranged in my mind.” Contrary to myth, James Watt did not invent the steam engine. Two Englishmen, Newcomen and Thomas Savery, did that. What Watt did was typically Scottish: he perfected something created by someone else, and gave

…

it a higher and wider application than its original inventor had imagined. Watt applied to the steam engine the idea of separate condensation, which allowed it to generate a constant motion, which, in 1781, Watt turned into a rotary motion. He had created

…

and liberty. But just as in these other cases, the version of technology we live with most closely resembles the one that Scots such as James Watt organized and perfected. It rests on certain basic principles that the Scottish Enlightenment enshrined: common sense, experience as our best source of knowledge, and arriving

…

, like the ceaselessly moving pistons of Watt’s steam engine. To the Scots, they were the key to modern life, just as they are for us. A rapid succession of Scottish inventors, engineers, doctors, and scientists proved their point to the rest of the world. James Watt, for example, grew up in Greenock, with

…

, the question of what happens to the heat after objects are heated and cooled, or what he called “latent heat.” Watt’s work on the steam engine led him to conduct a series of experiments on precisely this problem. Those experiments demonstrated that heat was not a substance but a property of

…

matter, just as his description of the principles of the steam engine laid the foundation of modern mechanical engineering. The issue for Watt, though, was always not just how a thing worked, but what to do with

…

English ironmaster Matthew Boulton of Birmingham. Their partnership, formed in 1775, gave them a complete monopoly over steam engine construction for the next quarter-century. Together they transformed Britain’s economic life. They turned the steam engine from primarily a water pump into a way to supply power for every conceivable industry, from John

…

greater and larger quantities than ever before. At almost the same moment as Watt and Boulton were setting up their factory and producing their first steam engine, Adam Smith was writing that the division of labor was the key to creating wealth. Watt’s invention revealed that the future of the division

…

-on diagnosis, and thinking of objects such as the human body as a system—not so different from the practical approach of engineers such as James Watt. In fact, science and medicine were probably more closely linked in Scotland than any other European country. Together with mathematics, they formed the triangular base

…

simply moving the enormous quantities of earth the construction of each lock required. He designed a huge dredging machine, powered by one of Watt’s steam engines, that could bring up eight hundred tons of mud a day. His friend and fellow poet Robert Southey saw it in operation when he came

…

society, and now industrial society. The next logical step was to improve the means of transport on those thoroughfares, with the help of Watt’s steam engine. Strangely, Watt himself was reluctant to do this. He seems to have believed the tremendous power generated by his invention would make any ship or

…

religious dissent and austere poverty, but high levels of literacy and a tendency to turn out ambitious, self-made men. George fell in love with steam engines while working as a teenager in the West Moor Mines. Stephenson took up a Cornishman’s invention, a locomotive engine powered by steam, and used

…

to wait for another century, and another form of power—gasoline rather than steam.30 III There was one other unforeseen consequence of Watt’s steam engine, which many contemporaries missed, but which a perceptive German observer named Karl Marx did not. Steam power allowed a factory or mill owner to build

…

emerging scientific industrial culture his fellow Scots had done so much to create. He wrote an admiring biography of Thomas Telford; his great heroes were James Watt and James Nasmyth, inventor of the industrial steam hammer. He was also a doctor, trained at Edinburgh medical school. In Smiles, in fact, all the

…

the South Pacific and remote corners of Latin America. Nor should one forget the more than a half-million Scots who, like Henry Brougham and James Watt and Thomas Telford, packed their bags and headed for new horizons and new careers in London or Birmingham or Liverpool. The great Scottish diaspora followed

…

1790s the incipient American industrial base came to rely on Scottish engineers, mechanics, and workers to set up its cotton mills, maintain and repair its steam-engine pumps, and operate its power looms. A textile worker from Paisley quickly discovered that he or she could work the same hours in a factory

…

hardworking Scots, not as gold prospectors. Peter opened a steamship line carrying prospectors and other immigrants between San Francisco and Sacramento. He built the first steam engine for a U.S. Navy vessel on the West Coast, and the first steam locomotive in California. James and Michael became partners in the Union

…

Iron Foundry, and while James retired, rich and satisfied, Michael opened another major foundry in Davenport, Iowa, with a sideline in steam engines and agricultural machinery. Meanwhile, Scottish engineer Andrew Hallidie designed and built San Francisco’s cable car network in 1873, a symbol of the city to

…

optimism and intellectual energy, as well as a belief in education as the foundation of democracy. In 1848 new power looms driven by Watt’s steam engine were replacing the old hand looms, so the Carnegie family left for America. Andrew was twelve when they settled in the former Fort Pitt at

…

items such as cooking utensils and sewing machines. The British had dominated the steel industry for more than a century, thanks in large part to James Watt’s steam engine and J. B. Neilson’s blast furnace. Now an English scientist named Henry Bessemer had developed a new way of forging steel directly out

…

head. Before Carnegie, business had to wait for technological advances by scientists such as Charles Macintosh (the inventor of vulcanized rubber) and engineers such as James Watt to create new products or increase production. Now the demands of production themselves would force technological change. The manager, not the engineer or the foreman

…

where certain quotations and facts came from, and what books are particularly useful for the discriminating reader. I have relied on two sturdy classics on James Watt: John Lord’s Capital and Steam Power, first published in 1923 and reprinted in a second edition in 1965, and Thomas Marshall’s 1925 biography

The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World

by Simon Winchester  · 7 May 2018  · 449pp  · 129,511 words

the Publisher List of Illustrations Unless otherwise noted, all images are in the public domain. Difference between Accuracy and Precision John Wilkinson Boulton and Watt steam engine Joseph Bramah Henry Maudslay Maudslay’s “Lord Chancellor” bench micrometer (courtesy of the Science Museum Group Collection) Flintlock on a rifle Thomas Jefferson Springfield Armory

…

his case, as Wilkinson is today rather little remembered. He is overshadowed quite comprehensively by his much-better-known colleague and customer, the Scotsman James Watt, whose early steam engines came into being, essentially, by way of John Wilkinson’s exceptional technical skills. History will show that the story of such engines, which were

…

, a time when the nation’s sailors and soldiers were being kept exceptionally busy.* John “Iron-Mad” Wilkinson, whose patent for boring cannon barrels for James Watt marked both the beginning of the concept of precision and the birth of the Industrial Revolution. John Wilkinson was born into the iron trade. His

…

Bersham’s consequent elevation from the local to the world stage, would come the following year, 1775, when he started to do serious business with James Watt. He would then marry his new cannon-making technique, though this time without a brand-new patent, incautiously, with the invention that Watt was just

…

would ensure that the Industrial Revolution and much else besides and beyond were powered by the cleverly harnessed power of steam. The principle of a steam engine is familiar, and is based on the simple physical fact that when liquid water is heated to its boiling point it becomes a gas. Because

…

doing so, perform real work. The beam could lift floodwater, say, out of a waterlogged tin mine. Thus was born a very rudimentary kind of steam engine, almost useless for any application beyond pumping water, but given that early eighteenth-century England was awash with shallow mines that were themselves awash with

…

. The Newcomen engine and its like remained in production for more than seventy years, its popularity beginning to lessen only in the mid-1760s, when James Watt, who was then employed making and repairing scientific instruments six hundred miles away at the University of Glasgow, studied a model of its workings closely

…

James Watt in 1765, they were anything but—changed Newcomen’s so-called fire-engine into a proper and fully functioning steam-powered machine. It became in an instant a device that in theory could produce almost limitless amounts of power. A cross section of a late eighteenth-century Boulton and Watt steam engine

…

to produce a patent himself (the already noted Number 1063 of January 1774, an exact one hundred fifty patents and exactly five years later than James Watt’s), was no less an inventor than John Wilkinson, ironmaster. By then, Wilkinson’s amiable madness was making itself felt throughout the ferrous community: all

…

Invented Method of Lessening the Consumption of Steam and Fuel in Fire-Engines.” It was a marriage, it turned out, of both convenience and necessity. James Watt, a Scotsman renowned for being pessimistic in outlook, pedantic in manner, scrupulous in affect, and Calvinist in calling, was obsessed with getting his machinery as

…

a damp, hot, opaque gray fog, were billowing clouds of steam. It was this, this scorching miasma of invisibility, that incensed the scrupulous and pedantic James Watt. Try as he might, do as he could, steam always seemed to be leaking, and doing so not stealthily but in prodigious gushes, and most

…

problem, and in an equal instant, he knew he had the solution: he would apply his cannon-boring technique to the making of cylinders for steam engines. So, without taking the precautionary step of filing a new patent for this entirely new application of his method, he proceeded to do with the

…

in its exactitude in all the remaining parts of this story. This is the figure of 0.1—one-tenth of an inch. For, as James Watt later put it, “Mr. Wilkinson has bored us several cylinders almost without error, that of 50 inch diameter . . . does not err the thickness of an

…

was something quite new, and it begins, essentially, with the delivery of that first machine on May 4, 1776. The central functioning part of the steam engine was possessed of a mechanical tolerance never before either imagined or achieved, a tolerance of 0.1 inches, and maybe even better. ON THE FAR

…

to long iron axles mounted to the ceiling and that, in turn, were set eventually rotating by an enormous thirty-two-horsepower Boulton and Watt steam engine that roared and steamed and smoked outside the building, in its own noisy and dangerous three-story lair. The Block Mills still stand as testament

…

another reason, one with profound social consequences. It was the first factory in the world to have been run entirely from the output of a steam engine. True, earlier machines had been driven by water, and so the concept of mechanization itself was not entirely new. But the scale and the might

…

BRITAIN, there was a very real sense that the Western world was changing, and changing fast. The social revolution that had been begun by James Watt and his steam engine had by the middle of the century properly taken hold, and industrialization was affecting everyone’s life, for good or for ill. Cities were

…

had designed and created the block-making machinery for the Royal Navy, and was still going strong), and the early and the more refined Watt steam engines themselves. Some other sources of power were on show, waterwheels and windmills most especially, and there were early horse-drawn omnibuses, one with two floors

…

-three instruments and tools he had on show during those six months in London, though they may have lacked the luster and swash of big steam engines and thousand-spindle looms, provided a road map to what would become engineering’s future (and won their maker more medals than any other of

…

. It is a central part of the Ford origin story that young Henry became especially adept at running and repairing a neighbor’s portable Westinghouse steam engine, and that, in the summer of 1882, he took a three-dollar-a-day wage to drive this doughty little engine from farm to farm

…

to popularize motoring and to build the first automotive assembly line in Detroit. Before long, he became the demonstrator and repairman for the local Westinghouse steam engine distributor. Yet, soon thereafter, realizing the one limitation of his beloved threshing engines—no electricity!—he left the world of steam behind to become a

…

personnel, realising what this meant, went down to the factory at high speed in varying directions. A few of them took refuge in nearby large steam engine exhaust casings, which made useful shelters. I screwed down the control valve immediately, but this had no effect and the speed continued to rise, but

…

to call itself precise was a cylinder, bored from a block of solid metal by a Cumberland ironmaster in 1776, specially made for use in James Watt’s steam engine, and at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Now, the component at the heart of what LIGO’s David Reitze publicly described as “the

…

this writing, LIGO has proved the existence of four such waves. Photograph courtesy of Caltech/MIT/LIGO Lab. John Wilkinson’s cylinder fit inside James Watt’s steam engine with a degree of precision amounting to the thickness of an English shilling, about one-tenth of an imperial inch. Such precision had never been

…

. The mechanics of their making illustrates just how far the idea of precision had come in the century since John Wilkinson, boring his cylinders for James Watt, had come. The need to make the standards as near-perfect as imaginable was to become the stuff of obsession. Fifty international delegates—all of

…

. “Faster, Better, Cheaper” in the History of Manufacturing: From the Stone Age to Lean Manufacturing and Beyond. Boca Raton, FL. CRC Press. 2017. Russell, Ben. James Watt: Making the World Anew. London. Reaktion Books. 2014. Rybczynski, Witold. One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw. New York. Touchstone

…

Blow-Up, 215 Board of Longitude, British, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35–36, 64, 105 Boeing, 269 bokeh (“quality of blur”), 224 Boulton and Watt steam engines, 46, 48, 71 Bragg reflectors, 296, 297 Bramah, Joseph, 53–60, 54, 276 “challenge lock” displayed in window of, 54–55, 112n, 124, 125–27

…

, 309–10 lathes made of, rather than wood, 61, 64 machines to manufacture pulley blocks made of, 71 smelting and forging, 40–41, 43, 49 steam engines made of, 46, 48–52 Wilkinson’s cylinder-boring technique for, 42–44, 49–52, 304–6 Iron Bridge of Coalbrookdale, 41 Ito, Tsutomi, 321

…

, 260–61 standardization, 86 French weaponry and, 86–93 see also interchangeable parts start-ups, invention of term, 284n steam, figurative use of word, 74n steam engines, 39, 44–52, 304 Boulton and Watt, 46, 48, 71 first factory run entirely from output of, 71–72 invention of precision and, 22, 51

…

engine design improved by, 45–47, 46 patent awarded to, 46, 47 personality and demeanor of, 47–48 Wilkinson’s cylinder-boring technique applied to steam engine of, 39, 44, 45, 46, 47, 49–52, 304, 306 weaponry: handmade, physical shortcomings of, 84 with inbuilt GPS systems, 269 nuclear strategic arsenal, 262

…

, 40 Wilkinson, John, 23, 38–44, 40, 45, 55, 122, 304–6 cannon making improved by, 41–44, 87 cylinder-boring technique of, applied to steam engines, 39, 44, 45, 46, 47, 49–52, 304, 306 Gainsborough’s portraits of, 38–39 iron smelting and forging and, 40–41, 43, 49 obsessed

Empire of Guns

by Priya Satia  · 10 Apr 2018  · 927pp  · 216,549 words

to one dominated by industry and machine manufacture—the commonly accepted story of the industrial revolution—is typically anchored in images of cotton factories and steam engines invented by unfettered geniuses. The British state has little to do in this version of the story. For more than two hundred years, that image

…

1859, and saw the giants of the industrial revolution as exemplars of that ethos: he wrote the first biography of Matthew Boulton, of Boulton & Watt steam engine fame, shortly after, in 1865. The myth of self-help has remained at the heart of our understanding of the industrial revolution. To be sure

…

’t demarcate modern and premodern industries. Particular processes rather than entire industries were transformed. Karl Marx knew that the machine came from the workshop; the steam engine was produced piecemeal in Soho and in John Wilkinson’s ironworks. The entanglement of large and small, old and new, is what makes short- or

…

air, and in 1795 (the year of the scandal around him in the Quaker church) he was a trustee for James Watt for the Soho Foundry’s investments in the manufacture of steam engines. His father and siblings lent Boulton money on a mortgage on Boulton’s shares in the Birmingham Canal Navigation Company

…

to create an assay office in town. Both invested in the Rose Copper Company, in Swansea, in 1802. Galton Jr. assisted Boulton and Watt in steam engine orders and other business matters. The wealth acquired from gunmaking had far-flung and important repercussions in the industrial and commercial economy. Farmer and Galton

…

for guns was low, skilled smiths might be busily employed in making buttons, buckles, cutlery, spurs, candlesticks, whip handles, coffee pots, inkstands, bells, carriage fittings, steam engines, snuffboxes, lead pipes, jewelery, lamps, or kitchen tools. They were flexible; they had to be, and it was the nature of metalworking. Birmingham’s population

…

Boulton not only took gunmakers’ help, he had a stake in their affairs. He leased land from his frequent colleague and Handsworth neighbor John Whateley. James Watt leased a forge and engine from the Whateleys. Boulton introduced Whateley to his business associate William Matthews to supply guns for a ship Matthews was

…

near the scale of Birmingham. It was water powered, but the River Ravensbourne proved such an unreliable power source that it was replaced with a steam engine. Lathes, grinders, and other machinery were installed; cottages erected for workmen; and bonuses awarded for good work. A proofhouse was added, and the Tower workshops

…

. In 1811, the French traveler Louis Simond visited a Birmingham mill where three hundred men made ten thousand barrels a month with a 120-horsepower steam engine. Small workshops coexisted with and served the large-scale units, like Galton’s, Boulton’s, and the Ordnance Office’s, that emerged out of government

…

1820. He was attacked for this, but his machines found less controversial use in producing the tubes used in gas and water pipes, bedsteads, and steam engines. Surplus government musket barrels were also repurposed as service conduits for gas lighting. Birmingham’s gunmakers were in some ways part of the backbone of

…

also gave the British government a major role in the creation and employment of arguably the most iconic developments of the industrial revolution, including the steam engine, copper sheathing, and interchangeable-parts manufacturing. Early changes in iron production owed much to the state and to war demand. The first reverberatory furnace was

…

and perspective in drawing plans. In this way, the Ordnance Office and John Wilkinson came to play a central role in the history of the steam engine. In 1770, just before Townshend became master general, the office hired Jan Verbruggen, from The Hague, as master founder. Experienced in improving cannon boring technology

…

engine at the Royal Brass Foundry to keep up with his furnace capacity. Thus did state establishments “unintentionally nourish” development of the steam engine. The precision Verbruggen introduced made the steam engine more viable. John Wilkinson improved on his machinery, patenting a cannon lathe in 1774. The Ordnance Board canceled the patent a year

…

lathe based on his cannon lathe, and it alone could accurately bore the cylinders for James Watt’s steam engines: its importance to Watt’s experiments “cannot be exaggerated.” Wilkinson was already the iron supplier for the Boulton & Watt steam engine enterprise. In typical Birmingham style, Boulton, another government contractor (on which more below), was applying

…

the lessons of button manufacture to steam engine manufacture. Wilkinson was also one of the earliest purchasers of Boulton & Watt engines, which he used to raise water from mine shafts. He was the

…

to purchase their blowing engine, to blow an iron furnace at his works in Broseley, buying four more in a year. He partnered in the steam engine business: he made the main engine parts—cylinder, condenser, and piston—at his ironworks, and Soho took on the more complicated parts. The alliance lasted

…

, Boulton and Watt struggled to get their cylinders made, finally setting up their own boring mill—the beginning of the Soho Foundry. Galton supported their steam engine venture at the turn of the century, too. In the 1780s and 1790s, Richmond expanded the Ordnance Office’s technological pursuits. He originated the Ordnance

…

. In 1782, he went to see Boulton and Watt; they promised to mention his work to their partner John Wilkinson. They corresponded about using a steam engine in his experiments. Boulton and Watt also forwarded Cort’s description of his technique to Wilkinson. Cort demonstrated the technique before Midlands ironmasters. He had

…

than being bound to forests or rivers. Coal-rich areas like Wales, the Midlands, and Scotland profited; new metal-using trades and iron founders thrived. Steam engines fueled the spread of the puddling furnace. They, too, multiplied as war put pressure on coal mining. In 1796, Boulton determined that little money was

…

usefull to the publick.” He advised his son “to confine his persuits to things usefull rather than ornamental.” The war and the expanding market for steam engines underwrote his embrace of utility. After the wars, the influential political economist Thomas Malthus claimed, “In carrying the late war, we were powerfully assisted by

…

our steam-engines.” In fact, war had assisted the spread of steam engines. These inventions—steam engines, lathes, the puddling process—facilitated the rise of large-scale industry. They were interdependent and mutually reinforcing, and the state

…

-century industry and innovation. In all this, too, the state supported industrial revolution—haltingly, ungraciously, and yet vitally. * * * — Major turning points of industrial revolution—the steam engine, puddling, copper sheathing—were triggered by war and produced by networks of contractor-industrialists. Causal relations between science and industry were not direct, unitary, or

…

James Keir arrived in the area around 1770, dreaming of amassing a fortune by experimenting with alkalis. As general manager at Soho, he collaborated with James Watt and other Lunar Society members. His chemical works made key ingredients for pottery, glass, and soap, but he also made metal alloys, specifically out of

…

interest in inventing a mode of coin manufacture that would reduce costs and deter counterfeiters. He would adapt the coining press to the rotative steam engine. Moreover, just then, steam engines had made it possible to mine enormous quantities of copper in Cornwall. (This, too, fueled the counterfeiting disease.) From 1785, Boulton owned his

…

was also entangled with guns: he turned to gunmakers for pivotal technical expertise and collaboration. He and Watt were already collaborating with Galton on the steam engine business, civic affairs, and the Lunar Society. Boulton was also in frequent touch with the Whateleys. They shared common interests and supported one another’s

…

oversaw the modernization and reequipment of the Royal Mint from 1807, a project completed in 1810, a few months after his death. He supplied the steam engine, the bulk of the machinery, and the skilled fitters to supervise it. The first coinage of this reformed Royal Mint was a load of copper

…

autobiography he published that year, acknowledging also the kindness of other “famous Birmingham names,” including Galton, Boulton, Priestley, and Garbett. A year later, Galton and James Watt corresponded with a Liverpool slave trader about supplying engines for Trinidad. Galton was not alone in searching for a way to simultaneously pursue the African

…

Enfield. They persuaded the master armorer at Harpers Ferry to take charge of Enfield. The factory made locks and bayonets; its waterwheels were replaced by steam engines. It went into full production mode in 1856 as the Royal Small Arms Factory (as Colt’s factory closed in failure). The sixty-odd parts

…

wrought iron to work into various goods. Over time, it was employed further back in the chain of production. a “plain Englishman”: Joseph Black to James Watt, 1784, quoted in Coleman and Macleod, “Attitudes to New Techniques,” 602–3. Wilkinson installed fourteen: Birch, The Economic History of the British Iron and Steel

…

manufacture of navy biscuits on a production-line basis. Maudslay’s factory at Lambeth set new standards of precision engineering using lathes but also made steam engines; he sold one to the Woolwich Arsenal in 1809. Boulton puzzled over: P. Jones, Industrial Enlightenment, 89. In 1775, the Society: Aris’s Birmingham Gazette

…

: Mathias, The Transformation of England, 65–66, 82–83. This community also: See, for instance, BCA: MS3782/12/27/102: SGII to Matthew Boulton (and James Watt), [1782]. “culture of apartness”: P. Jones, Industrial Enlightenment, 187–88. a range of devices: Pearson, The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton, 1:43

…

into a national banker. Wallace, The Social Context of Innovation, 228–32. The Spooners evolved: The partners also leased land, a mill, and a steam engine on behalf of James Watt from the Whateleys. BCA: MS3602/295: Lease, December 21, 1817; MS3602/308: Lease, December 7, 1818. two Quaker banks: Price, “The Great Quaker

…

copper, 76, 168, 199, 202–3, 205–12 counterfeit, 202–3, 205, 206, 208, 210 meaning of “coin,” 201 silver, 210–11 standardization of, 210 steam engine and, 206, 207, 211 token, 126, 202, 206–8, 210, 211 Cold War, 12, 13, 256, 299, 374–77, 401, 410 Collins, William, 129–30

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World)

by Robert J. Gordon  · 12 Jan 2016  · 1,104pp  · 302,176 words

the days of ancient Rome, the First Industrial Revolution had begun to spread its bounty in many directions before 1870, particularly in the form of steam engines, cotton gins, railroads, steamships, telegraphic communications, and rudimentary agricultural machinery that greatly eased the burden of human labor on the farm. If the beginning of

…

to come in 1870. In that year, light was obtained from candles, whale oil, and town gas, and most motive power in manufacturing came from steam engines, water wheels, and horses. An ever-expanding network of passenger and freight railroads provided intercity transportation, but train speeds were barely one-third those achieved

…

accorded the railroads by commentators in the late nineteenth century, and for all the enormous progress that they enabled, the transportation revolution enabled by the steam engine was incomplete. Steam railroads did cross the country by 1870, but this did not help the urban worker in the daily task of transportation from

…

, brickyards, and factories, and city governments curtailed fire protection and garbage collection.53 A full century after James Watt’s steam engine, why were cities so dependent on horses rather than steam-powered devices? Disadvantages of steam engines within the narrow confines of cities included the ever-present danger of fires started by sparks, their acrid

…

, and the elimination of smoke and cinders. The diesel engine produced four times as much work out of a pound of fuel as did the steam engine.38 Whether in primitive conditions in the 1870s, the more comfortable Pullman cars introduced in the late nineteenth century, or the sleek streamliners of the

…

, its points representing the new suburbs established along the rail lines extending out from the city.40 Because the early commuter railroads were propelled by steam engines, they shared the discomfort of smoke and cinders, hazards that could be alleviated only by closing all the windows and suffocating on hot summer days

…

transit within the city in the late nineteenth century, where until 1890 the horse was the dominant prime mover of intracity passenger and freight transportation. Steam engines could not be used on city streets because of fear of fires started by sparks, deafening noise, thick smoke, and heavy weight that shook foundations

…

a horse-drawn streetcar.58 At its peak, the Chicago system extended over eighty-six miles of cable tracks and was powered by thirteen large steam engines; it played a major role in extending the residential reach of the city. It was estimated at the time to have “removed from a street

…

networks.”65 The solution to congestion in densely packed U.S. cities emerged from London, where the Metropolitan Railway underground line opened its service with steam engine propulsion in 1863. By definition, an underground or overhead “elevated” service could bypass all traffic congestion on the surface. New York’s elevated trains predated

…

northern tip of Manhattan.66 Chicago’s elevated trains followed sixteen years later when elevated tracks opened for service in 1892, intended to allow small steam engines to bring visitors to the 1893 Columbian Exposition. For the 1893 fair itself, a three-mile elevated loop circled the fairgrounds, the first to be

…

, as shown in chapter 5. Mechanization of agriculture lagged behind that of manufacturing, in part because steam engines were too expensive and bulky to be purchased by individual farmers. Thus the horse became dominant over the steam engine in farming and intra-urban transportation for the same reasons—its bulkiness and expense (additional factors

…

until the arrival of the internal combustion engine was the problem of devising a self-propelled steam engine that could operate “on soft, uneven ground without sinking in or tipping over. In other words, a self-propelled steam engine had to be like a horse.”32 Though drought, heat, and insects were particular problems

…

the period of rapid growth. This interpretation can be related to the sequence of industrial revolutions. The first industrial revolution (IR #1), based on the steam engine and its offshoots—particularly the railroad, steamships, and the shift from wood to iron and steel—resulted from inventions in the period 1770 to 1820

…

line to automobile manufacture, dating from December 1, 1913.41 Developed from the ideas of many predecessors, dating back to Richard Garrett’s 1853 English steam engine factory, the assembly line revolutionized manufacturing and deserves equal credit with electric motors for achieving the acceleration of TFP growth which began in the 1920s

…

assembly line, together with electric-powered tools, utterly transformed manufacturing. Before 1913, goods were manufactured by craftsmen at individual stations that depended for power on steam engines and leather or rubber belts. The entire product would be crafted by one or two employees. Compare that with a decade later, when each worker

…

and Cyrus McCormick for his 1834 invention of the reaper. They were preceded by many British inventors going back to Thomas Newcomen and James Watt (the inventors of the steam engine) and George Stephenson (who shares in the invention of the railroad). Most studies of long-term economic growth attempt to subdivide the sources

…

). 41. The required qualification is that the Chicago stockyards adopted assembly-line methods in the 1890s or even before, and Richard Garrett and Sons built steam engines on the assembly-line principle in England as early as 1843. 42. Abramowitz and David (2000, p. 48). 43. Weintraub (1939, p. 26). 44. Ristuccia

…

, 477, 482 Star Wars (films), 420 State Farm (firm), 309 state governments: automobiles regulated by, 314; regulation of businesses by, 313, 629 steam boilers, 126 steam engines, 48–49; cable cars powered by, 146; commuter railroads powered by, 143; railroads powered by, 132–42, 168 Steckel, Richard, 83, 84 steel industry, 267

The Age of Wonder

by Richard Holmes  · 15 Jan 2008  · 778pp  · 227,196 words

Beddoes, a one-time lecturer from Oxford, who had frequently applied to the Royal Society for subsidy. Despite recommendations from the Duchess of Devonshire and James Watt of the Lunar Society, Banks reluctantly turned down these requests, partly on the grounds that these experiments involved human patients breathing various kinds of gas

…

new lodger came to stay with Grace Davy, arranged through the ever-solicitous Tonkin. Gregory Watt was the prodigal son of the great Scottish engineer James Watt. At twenty-five he was the youngest member of the Lunar Society, brilliantly clever but physically frail-probably consumptive-and emotionally unstable.25 He had

…

or less ill, and in need of gas treatment. But he needed initial capital: he asked Giddy for a gift of £350, got financing from James Watt, applied publicly to Joseph Banks at the Royal Society, and privately to the Duchess of Devonshire. Knowing perhaps that the duchess was not averse to

…

whole series of other papers on gases, electricity, heat and-most intriguingly-the universal energy transmitted by starlight. Beddoes read these eagerly, and, encouraged by James Watt, invited Davy-not yet twenty-to join the Institute as an assistant. It is significant that Davy (and his mentor Tonkin) clearly saw this as

…

to his Bristol publisher Joseph Cottle, and sent him to visit the Institute’s most influential supporters: the powerful Wedgwood family at Cote House, and James Watt and the Lunar Society in Birmingham. Davy made an excellent impression on everyone he met, and his circle of acquaintances rapidly expanded. Initially Davy boarded

…

the new empirical chemistry of Priestley and Lavoisier to test, and if necessary challenge, the Brunonian system of medicine by controlled experiment. He wrote to James Watt, an outstanding engineer, for designs of gasinhaling equipment, including a silken face-mask with a wooden mouthpiece. The masks and gas bags were based on

…

Genius’, ‘Saint Michael’s Mount’ and ‘The Tempest’. It was in this same month that Davy first used a portable gas chamber especially designed by James Watt. This device allowed a much longer total exposure to nitrous oxide, and also psychologically isolated the subject from his laboratory surroundings. It was a narrow

…

in Researches. For Thomas Beddoes this was a crushing disappointment, particularly as it was exactly what Joseph Banks had always predicted. Banks had written to James Watt: ‘in the case of Dr Beddoes’s project-I do not fully understand it, &…I do not expect any beneficial consequences will be derived from

…

‘Inventor of the Capillary Tube Lamp’.100 George Stephenson (1781-1848) was a gifted, self-educated engineer, and later the designer of the early railway steam engine, the famous ‘Stephenson Rocket’ which brought him international fame. He was an inventor of genius, an honest man and no fraud. He was to be

…

Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament were illuminated with the new gaslights, ‘most Brilliant’, Banks noted approvingly.8 There were paddle ships powered by steam engines, which could ply the Thames against the tide, and make all-weather crossings to France. These began to appear in Turner’s pictures, and even

…

the turnpike road, A thing to counterbalance human woes: For ever since immortal man hath glow’d With all kinds of mechanics, and full soon Steam-engines will conduct him to the moon. Most remarkable of all, in the next stanza Byron light-heartedly connected the discovery and daring of contemporary science

…

the first electrical generators, by producing an ‘alternating’ electrical current. This would lead to electrical dynamos that would ultimately revolutionise industry as much as James Watt’s steam engine. His experiment with magnetic coils and a galvanometer (which was made to move without physical contact), carried out at the Institution’s laboratory on 29

…

laws of reflection, and indeed their undulatory theories are perfectly similar.’58 This allows her to discuss the action of sunshine, rain, frost, steam, clouds, steam engines, musical instruments and even ‘squeezing water out of a sponge’ in the same chapter, headed simply ‘Heat’.59 Newton remains the presiding genius of the

…

at Birmingham, which met each month on the night of the full moon (in theory so they could walk home safely). A close friend of James Watt and Matthew Boulton, he described much. of the new science of the day in his long and remarkable poem The Botanic Garden (1791). Its extensive

…

Shelley, and covered the basics of Romantic science including astronomy, chemistry, electricity, geology and meteorology. JAMES WATT, 1736-1819. Engineer and member of the Lunar Society. In partnership with Matthew Boulton he developed new forms of steam engine, for use in mines and textile manufacture. The international unit of electricity, the watt (a measure

…

Niger, 1890 Charles Waterton, Wanderings in South America, 1825 William Wordsworth, rejected passage on Mungo Park, from The Prelude, 1805 Humphry Davy Thomas Beddoes and James Watt, Considerations on the Medical Use of Factitious Airs, J. Johnson, 1794, British Library catalogue B. Tracts. 489 Henry Brougham, ‘Sir Humphry Davy’, in The Lives

…

, May 2006. See also John Allen, ‘The Early History of Varfell’, in Ludgvan, Ludgvan Horticultural Society, no date 45 Golinski, pp157-83 46 Reply from James Watt, Birmingham, 13 November 1799, in JD Fragments, pp24-6 47 HD Works 3, pp278-9 48 HD Works 3, pp278-80; on Davy’s impetuosity

…

Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, Picador, 2001 49 Joseph Cottle, Reminiscences, vol 1, 1847, p264 50 HD Works 3, pp246-7; James Watt, Birmingham, 13 November 1799, in JD Fragments, pp24-6; equipment partly illustrated in Fullmer, p216 51 Treneer, p72 52 Fullmer, p213 53 Ibid., p214 54

…

Fragments, p150 126 Coleridge to Southey, 1803; see Treneer, p114 127 Treneer, p78 128 JB Correspondence 4, letters 1290-6, cover an exchange between Banks, James Watt and the Duchess of Devonshire about the viability of Dr Beddoes’s scheme in December 1794 129 HD Works 3, p276 130 F.F. Cartwright

Running Money

by Andy Kessler  · 4 Jun 2007  · 323pp  · 92,135 words

> > > Wilkinson and Watt The Industrial Revolution movie. Hmmm. Like everyone else, I must have slept through 10th-grade history. It had something to do with steam engines and workers covered in soot and Mary Poppins and Victorian England and all that tea sipping, stiff upper lip, Empire stuff. But somewhere in that

…

it even started. Many had tried to harness the power of steam for hundreds of years. But just a few years earlier in 1706, a steam engine invented by Thomas Newcomen actually, kind of, sort of worked. It was a clanky contraption that theoretically could lift two tons of water up

…

Newcomen engines were the only game in town for the next 60 years. In 1763, a technician named James Watt was employed at Glasgow University. His task was to maintain—more like fix—a Newcomen steam engine that the university owned. It was, as techies like to say, a POS, a piece of

…

a giant cylinder with a plug, or piston, inside of it. A furnace boiled water and pumped steam into a cylinder. These were low-pressure steam engines, also called atmospheric engines. High-pressure engines kept blowing up, killing off everyone involved. Low-pressure workers were survivors. 54 Running Money Unlike your

…

experiments measuring temperature and pressure and proved a prevailing theory that steam contained “latent heat.” In doing so, Watt figured he knew why Newcomen’s steam engine was all wet. Watt theorized that the cylinder had to stay as hot as possible, boiling hot, so new steam added to it would

…

important part of English law to protect property owners, even if the property was just ideas. In 1769, Watt was granted a patent for his steam engine design by Parliament, which had recently taken over the patent-issuing duty from the king. Parliament was run by property owners, who, not surprisingly,

…

out Roebuck’s two-thirds interest in the patent. More importantly, Boulton agreed to fund the continued research by Watt into making his external condenser steam engine work. The Newcomen design was still selling, despite all its flaws, but the market wanted more powerful engines. Watt’s biggest problem was getting

…

’s patent, which was set to expire in 1783. The bill passed, and the newly formed Boulton & Watt Company owned the patent on atmospheric steam engines for 25 years, until 1800. So now it’s 1774, and the king desperately needed those Wilkinson cannons. Wilkinson got the order because he had

…

tool also needed a source of power to turn. It required teams of horses, which were expensive to feed, let alone clean up after. James Watt’s steam engines were in the area, pumping water out of coal mines, and Wilkinson thought he could use one to crank his bellows instead of horses.

…

So, Wilkinson tried one. Success? Nope. Instant failure. There was barely any power from Watt’s engine to pump the bellows. So Wilkinson took the steam engine apart and probably started laughing. Watt’s cylinder was awful— as jagged as England’s shoreline. Even wrapped with wet hemp, it leaked steam with

…

8. The difference for miners and millers was staggering. Being a reasonable businessman, he told Boulton and Watt that he could improve their crappy little steam engine by a factor of five, in exchange for the exclusive rights to supply precision cylinders to B&W. Deal. As an investor, I was

…

invest—all that was missing was a business model. It was Matthew Boulton who came up with one. Boulton and Watt didn’t actually sell steam engines. No one could afford one. Most of the early customers were Cornish mines. Beyond Parliament-sponsored joint-stock companies, the stock market and banking

…

punch. At the end of the night, the mine companies were drained of cash and the miners drained of brain cells. So instead of selling steam engines, Boulton just traveled around to mines (and later mills and factories) and simply asked how many horses they owned. Boulton and Watt would then

…

install a steam engine and charge one-third of the annual cost of each horse it replaced over the life of the patent, that is, until 1800. Back

…

then, a horse cost about 15 pounds per year, and I have seen figures for the parts cost of their steam engine of 200–300 pounds to build a 4-hp engine. A 50-hp engine cost around 1,200 pounds. Not having four eating and shitting

…

cheaper,” I said, cutting to the chase the next time Zed called to check up on me. “So?” Mr. Zed asked. “So Watt’s steam engine meant horsepower got cheaper for England than the rest of the world.” Wilkinson and Watt 59 “And who used it?” “Miners.” “So the British became

…

that second derivative stuff. > > > Pressure Drop OK, maybe this homework was good for me. Mr. Zed got me thinking—would I have invested in the steam engine business? Maybe. The 25-year patent was nice, the business model fairly unique. But pumping water from mines? Where is the monster market in that

…

? By the time the Boulton & Watt patent expired in 1800, they had 500 steam engines up and pumping. England was on its way to being an empire. What I found the most interesting was the drop in the cost of

…

invented the Spinning Mule. Taken on its own, it was no big deal, but it was possibly the single most important invention after the Watt steam engine. This machine didn’t just spin or twist; its spindles moved back and forth up to 5 feet, stretching the yarn. This effectively stretched

…

running water could keep up with the power needed to run one of these things. Matthew Boulton, call your office! Lots of Boulton & Watt steam engines came to run these stubborn Spinning Mules. Another barrier broken—cheap and silky cotton thread and yarn. But they still had to be run through

…

tried to use a waterwheel to operate the mill, but it barely budged his machine. He quickly contacted Boulton and Watt and hooked up their steam engine. Cheap power helped create a new market that didn’t exist previously. My sense is that Cartwright built his power looms assuming he could

…

one pound by hand. Now that machines had broken the barriers all along the cloth value chain, the clothing business took off. And demand for steam engines took off with it. In 1792, when the gin was invented, no more than 150,000 pounds of American cotton made its way to

…

Instead it was a complete reengineering of life based on the ability to provide daily staples at much lower costs. Getting everyone together in one steam engine–driven manufactory produced higher-quality and lower-cost textiles than anything that could be done at home by old spinsters. As long as England could

…

It makes a difference—fortunes are made or lost depending on time frame. The barriers in the Industrial Revolution took time to come down. The steam engine needed 25 years to help lower the cost of cloth. Steamships and propellers and turbines unfolded over the next 100 years. I’m patient, but

…

&W’s dividends were quite valuable. Boulton could have cashed out in year three, and many others could have owned his piece of the steam engine franchise. In fact, Watt might have been able to cut out Boulton altogether and just sell a piece of his business to the stock market

…

retrospect, sure, yeah, I’d have owned a million shares. But put yourself back in 1775. B&W had a clunky, smelly 4-rpm steam engine that pumped water out of mines. Who gives a rat’s tail about that business? And worse, their customers couldn’t even afford the damn

…

great and profitable ideas continue to get funded by Wall Street. The biggest problem facing any new business, be it making B&W IPO 91 steam engines or static memory, iron foundries or semiconductor fabrication facilities (fabs), is finding capital to fund the business. Banks won’t lend money to businesses they

…

be an unfair advantage and a business model to leverage all this or the investment will inevitably collapse. There must have been more than a steam engine and some textile mills to this story. Those Brits ran the table for 100 years. Something else was going on. Where was my partner

…

stock hit $3 and then bought a couple of million shares. But there had to have been more great investments, more waterfalls related to the steam engine. Where were they? I have historic capital I’d like to test out and conceptually put to work. If I can find them, the

…

during the Industrial Revolution, each time lowering the cost of clothing and other goods and providing more scale to the economic engine. James Watt wasn’t resting on his laurels. His steam engine patent was to expire in 1800, so he kept inventing. In 1782, he invented the double-acting, noncondensing engine. Instead

…

expanding steam, but still low-pressure steam. 92 Running Money River steamships: Robert Fulton got his hands on one of the few B&W steam engines allowed outside of England and in 1807 built a 142-foot-long steamship, the Clermont, which soon made the 150-mile trip from New York

…

with paddles and running on rivers or along coasts, were the first to lower the cost of transportation. Investable? Maybe. Depends on how much the steam engines cost Fulton and how much he charged. From the sounds of this story, I’m doubling my position in Boulton & Watt—despite the U.

…

: In 1815, George Stephenson was tasked with hauling coal out of open pits. Horses were too slow and coal was in huge demand to run steam engines. He built a steam locomotive, the Blutcher, which worked on tracks, instead of cogs and pinions and spikes. No one thought it could haul

…

Ocean steamships and propellers: The next barrier was a steampowered Atlantic crossing. There was only one problem—how to carry enough coal to keep the steam engine cranking for that long trip. A self-proclaimed expert on the subject, Reverend Dionysius Lardner, announced in 1837 that the longest theoretical distance a steamship

…

the time and uncertainty of the crossing. Both the Great Western and the Sirius, amazingly, were paddle ships. The next innovation was propellers. The steam engine could directly drive a shaft to which a propeller was attached. The screw propeller was more efficient than a paddle wheel because as moving water

…

-be-formed NASA were large buyers of semiconductors. The military driving semiconductors sounds plausible, much as Wilkinson’s cannon backlog drove the need for the steam engine. Great story, but I’m not so sure. The computer industry was already taking off during the post–World War II economic boom. I

…

transistors it contained. The costs were photoresist and aluminum and some labor. Shrinking the transistors drove down the cost per transistor, just as an efficient steam engine drove down the cost per horsepower. Bing, bang, boom—the learning curve is invented. Shrink, integrate, shrink, integrate. This learning curve is the scale,

…

really could augment the The Augmenter 123 human race and increase efficiency and productivity by replacing costly repetitive human functions. That was real scale, like steam engines scaling labor. Bing-bing-bing. On December 5, 1968, the world changed. Of course, you couldn’t invest quite yet. A few more things

…

was needed for an intellectual property economy to emerge. The most obvious metaphor and parallel between the Industrial Revolution and the digital revolution are the steam engine and the microprocessor. Both are worthless as stand-alones, but when attached to some process, each lowered the process’s cost and increased its

…

performance. Steam engines were attached to bellows in iron foundries and to spinning frames and looms in textile mills, replacing horses and water. Eventually, machines and factories

…

were designed knowing that steam engines would power them, as they did the spinning mule. Microprocessors initially “attached” to calculators but eventually new products, like personal computers, were designed with

…

the microprocessor as its core. Both steam engines and microprocessors never stopped improving. Watt added sun and planet gearing and double-action pis- 126 Running Money tons. Intel and others continued to integrate

…

Racket Many others have written about the history of the PC business. I’m more intrigued by the network effect, linking all these machines together. Steam engines made cheaper goods; steamships delivered those goods more cheaply. Both provided scale. Microprocessors make applications cheaper; communications deliver those applications more cheaply. “Do you

…

sharing such huge waterfalls. In fact, maybe Metcalfe’s Law is the formula for Doug Engelbart’s scaling of human knowledge, just as Watt’s steam engine scaled human power. And Xerox PARC? I’ve been there a few times. The first was in the early 1990s, when Xerox management was

…

, wheat prices collapsed. Farmers began turning in their pitchforks and moving to 271 272 Running Money the cities in droves to work in manufactories. Steam engines were driving textile mills to allow the British to sell cheap and comfortable clothing to the world. In fact, one particular machine, Samuel Crompton’s

…

spinning mule, hooked up to a Boulton & Watt steam engine, would repeatedly stretch and wind cotton thread and yarn until it was as “smooth as silk,” like Kessler Whiskey. No one making clothes at home

…

and, 183, 187–88 digitalization and, 127–28 intellectual property and, 136–37, 248 microchips and, 46, 253, 254 semiconductor memory and, 124, 126, 130 steam engines and, 58–59, 64, 68, 183 See also profitability computer literacy, 122 computers, 101–3, 183–84, 199, 277 augmentations, 118–23, 125, 199

…

46, 206–7, 263 Pittman, Bob, 69–73 planar process, 101–2 Porat, Marc, 97 power, cost of, 64, 65, 77–79 computer and, 121 steam engine and, 58–59, 66 power looms, 66 pricing. See competitive pricing productivity, 64, 123 profitability, 256, 258, 275 gross margin, 130, 132, 135 Progressive Networks

…

technology, 179 scale, 42, 48, 91, 95, 103 competitive pricing and, 180, 187 computer augmentations and, 121–23 309 local area networks and, 190, 191 steam engine and, 59, 123, 183, 190 trends and, 77–79 SDC (State Data Center), 187 SDL, 96 search services (Internet), 142–43, 146, 247 second

…

166, 208, 234, 260 Stac, 97 standard of living, 234–35, 246, 256, 279 Stanford Research Institute, 120, 185, 187 Stanford University, 152, 187, 191 steam engine, 64, 78, 91–95, 183 industrial significance of, 55–56, 58–59, 65–67, 68, 123, 125, 190, 271, 272 microprocessor parallel with, 125 Watt

The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty

by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson  · 23 Sep 2019  · 809pp  · 237,921 words

and various types of power looms. Equally transformative were the novel forms of inanimate power starting with Thomas Newcomen’s atmospheric engine and then James Watt’s steam engine. The steam engine not only made mining much more productive by enabling the pumping of water out of mines, but also changed transportation and metallurgy. The landscape

…

this type of experimentation in some of the iconic technologies of the Industrial Revolution, such as the steam engine. Innovators and entrepreneurs such as Robert Boyle, Denis Papin, Thomas Savory, Thomas Newcomen, John Smeaton, and James Watt all approached the problem of using steam power differently and experimented in their own ways in a

…

cumulative process that ultimately led to much more efficient and powerful steam engines. Both the nature of experimentation, with plenty of false starts and

…

a knighthood, ascending to the heights of English society. Or take the case of James Watt, the inventor of the Watt steam engine, who came from a middle-class Scottish family. Within ten years of his death in 1819 James Watt had a statue of himself in Westminster Abbey (and there is also a memorial tablet

The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation

by Carl Benedikt Frey  · 17 Jun 2019  · 626pp  · 167,836 words

of industrialization, however, living standards for many regressed. Our vocabulary bears witness to the changes that signify the century after 1750. Words like “factory,” “railroad,” “steam engine,” and “industry” first emerged then. But so did “working class,” “communism,” “strike,” “Luddite,” and “pauperism.” What began with the arrival of the first factories ended

…

associate with the Industrial Revolution could have been developed and put into widespread use long before the eighteenth century, yet they were not. Besides the steam engine, the eighteenth century didn’t witness any breakthroughs that would have “puzzled Archimedes.”2 The preindustrial history of technology illustrates an important point: resistance to

…

the public clock a turning point in Western society.49 And the historian Lewis Mumford has gone so far as to suggest that not the steam engine but the mechanical clock was the machine that made the industrial age.50 While this might seem exaggerated, there can be no doubt that the

…

factory system, with its fixed working hours. The coordination of factory work rested on regularity, routine, and accurate time measurement. And many later advances in steam engines and other machinery required the precision lathes and measuring tools that were developed during the Renaissance to produce scientific and navigational instruments. The close connection

…

Renaissance technology in economic terms is that it paved the way for one of humanity’s most important technological breakthroughs to date: the steam engine. The science of the steam engine started with Galileo and his secretary Evangelista Torricelli, who developed the first barometer. In 1648, Torricelli discovered that the atmosphere has weight. A

…

to get a local judge to impound the ship, but was unsuccessful. The boatmen then set upon Papin’s boat and smashed it and the steam engine to pieces. Papin died a pauper and was buried in an unmarked grave.79 Craft guilds, like that of the boatmen of Fulda, controlled apprenticeship

…

with Galileo—assuredly facilitated more such interaction and later technological developments. In particular, the discovery of atmospheric pressure was essential for the development of the steam engine that eventually replaced water power as the engine of the Industrial Revolution. Yet other technologies of the Industrial Revolution could have been invented and put

…

to mind, including the Manhattan Project, set up by the U.S. government to develop an atomic bomb before Nazi Germany could do so; the steam engine developed by Thomas Savery to pump water out of British coal mines; and the interchangeable parts pioneered by Eli Whitney to “substitute correct and effective

…

Evangelista Torricelli discovered that the atmosphere has weight, he could not have predicted the chain of events that would culminate in the invention of the steam engine. The view that new technology creates its own demand implies that the lack of preindustrial growth was primarily a consequence of obstacles to the supply

…

no doubt that the oppression of science by the Latin Church was an obstacle to some inventive pursuits, early industrialization had no scientific basis. The steam engine was a latecomer to the industrialization process. Science became a pillar of economic progress only in the nineteenth century. As Mokyr writes, “Many of

…

Around that time, many of the defining inventions of the Industrial Revolution emerged, including Arkwright’s water frame and Watt’s separate condenser for the steam engine, both of which were patented in 1769. The absence of an economic revolution is no mystery. The simple existence of better technology does not inevitably

…

a factory setting. Some equipment required large plants and thus was simply too large and complicated to fit into the living rooms of workers’ cottages. Steam engines, iron-puddling furnaces, silk-throwing mills, and so on all required factories.5 The development of the factory system was therefore a process of technological

…

muscular strength of people and animals to mechanical power was a defining characteristic of the rise of the factory system, the economic impacts of the steam engine became apparent only in the mid-nineteenth century. Without question, steam power had significant advantages over water power, whose use was always constrained by

…

geography. As Marx writes, with the steam engine a prime mover finally arrived, “whose power was entirely under man’s control, that was mobile and a means of locomotion, that was urban and

…

confined to any single task or industry: unlike water power, it could be applied in land transportation as well. Like the computer and electricity, the steam engine was an example of what economists call a general purpose technology. In contrast to other significant technologies of the eighteenth century, which were pure engineering

…

efforts, steam power was a spin-off of the scientific revolution, building on the discovery that the atmosphere has weight. With the steam engine, science first took center stage in technological development, and its importance only continued to grow. Practical use of the discovery of atmospheric pressure began in

…

the late seventeenth century with Thomas Savery, a British Army officer from Cornwall. In its early days, the steam engine—or the fire engine, as it was called—was nothing more than a pump, consisting of a boiler connected to a tank. The engine was

…

economically viable only with James Watt’s separate condensation chamber, which allowed condensation to take place without much loss of heat from the cylinder.21 However, it took several decades for the Watt engine to become viable and required a partnership with Matthew Boulton for financial backing. Watt’s steam engine was first used

…

mills, and iron and coal mining. Still, the immediate macroeconomic impacts of steam power were fairly limited. Calculating the so-called social savings of the steam engine, comparing it to the next best technology, the economic historian G. N. Von Tunzelmann has estimated that the national income of Britain in 1800 would

…

most factories were driven by water power until the 1840s. Only around that time did the fuel consumption of steam engines drop sufficiently to make them economically viable. The economic virtuosity of the steam engine became apparent as it revolutionized transportation during the mid-nineteenth century. Before the railroad, the Industrial Revolution was largely

…

power, but cheap iron was another enabling technology for the railroad and indeed much of the Industrial Revolution. Iron went into the construction of factories, steam engines, machinery, bridges, and rails. Before the eighteenth century, the pig iron produced in blast furnaces was expensive and fragile. The first breakthrough was made in

…

London Steam Carriage in 1803, was one of the key figures behind the development of the steam-powered railroad. His achievement consisted in making the steam engine lighter and smaller by abandoning the separate condenser, which allowed it to be used more effectively in transportation. However, a number of other significant technologies

…

tool; in the factory, the machine makes use of him,” Dickens’s fictional descriptions of the industrial landscape of Coketown, where “the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness,” stress the repetitive aspect of factory work, portraying

…

all classes of laborers employed in aid of machinery are well remunerated for their work. He added: “Instead of workmen being drudges, it is the steam-engine which is their drudge.”33 Examining data on 237,000 workers employed in cotton mills, Baines suggested that their wages were sufficient to buy not

…

working people. 6 FROM MASS PRODUCTION TO MASS FLOURISHING When Thomas Jefferson visited Britain in 1786, America was a young republic and a technological backwater. James Watt’s steam engine was the technological wonder of the time and proof of Britain’s relative technological progressiveness. It is “simple, great, and likely to have extensive

…

matter of substituting streetlights and trolleys for gaslight and horsecars, electrifying the factory was more than a simple substitution of motors for water wheels and steam engines.”18 Electrification, reorganization, and modern management were all part of the same process. As Paul David has noted, the main boost to American manufacturing productivity

…

them to their final destination.45 One reason horse technology predominated long after the Industrial Revolution is that steam power failed to revolutionize intracity transportation: “Steam engines could not be used on city streets because of fear of fires started by sparks, deafening noise, thick smoke, and heavy weight that shook foundations

…

personal transport—and thus the automobile. Efforts to develop motor carriages had already begun in the eighteenth century, using steam engines. However, despite decades of experimentation, steam cars never reached the mass market. Steam engines were too heavy, unsafe, and inefficient to revolutionize personal transportation. The automobile revolution would have to await the development

…

since the domestication of animals to substitute for human muscle. During the nineteenth century, the mechanization of farming lagged behind that of manufacturing simply because steam engines were unsuitable for unstructured environments and too expensive for most farmers.64 Even breakthrough inventions of the nineteenth century like Cyrus McCormick’s reaper were

…

used only to drain mines, and they did not even do that particularly well. Yet Thomas Savory, Thomas Newcomen, and James Watt, all realized that the steam engine was a GPT, and they conceived many applications for it. As noted above, AI is another GPT, and it is already being used to perform

…

, the economy goes through an adjustment process with slow productivity growth. * * * The Industrial Revolution in Britain was exceedingly similar. As Nicholas Crafts has shown, James Watt’s steam engine delivered its main boost to productivity some eight decades after it was invented.86 When John Smeaton examined Watt’s invention, patented in 1769, he

…

the progress of manufactures in Great Britain within the last thirty years without wonder and astonishment. Its rapidity … exceeds all credibility. The improvement of the steam engines, but above all the facilities afforded to the great branches of the woollen and cotton manufactories by ingenious machinery, invigorated by capital and skill, are

…

beyond all calculation.”88 Yet water power remained a cheaper source of energy for some time, so that the contribution of the steam engine to productivity growth remained absent. Had Malthus been given the modern statistical apparatus in 1800, he would not have found much suggestive of the coming

…

technological progress was about to come to an end. As the industries that constituted the key drivers of the Industrial Revolution—textiles, rail transport, and steam engineering—started to slow at the end of the nineteenth century, some observers asserted that the capitalist system had broken down.1 In a similar spirit

…

to work in workers’ interests, and consequently laborers quite rightly came to regard it as the engine of their good fortune. The adoption of the steam engine and, later, electrification created new and better-paying jobs for workers, who eventually acquired the skills required to run the machines. But another reason is

…

Crown), 2:135–36. 67. On Bauer, Zonca, and Drebbel, see Mokyr, 1992a, The Lever of Riches, chapter 4. 68. Ibid., 58. 69. On the steam engine, see R. C. Allen, 2009a, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), chapter 7. 70. F. Reuleaux, 1876, Kinematics of Machinery

…

other later applications even went beyond his envisioned uses. While in doubt about the use of steam in shipping, the Boulton & Watt company later displayed steam engines for ocean steamers at the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, some three decades after Watt’s death. 22. G. N. Von Tunzelmann, 1978, Steam

…

Power and British Industrialization to 1860 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). 23. J. Kanefsky and J. Robey, 1980, “Steam Engines in 18th-Century Britain: A Quantitative Assessment,” Technology and Culture 21 (2): 161–86. 24. N. F. Crafts, 2004, “Steam as a General Purpose Technology

…

took almost half a century for steam to displace sail. It was not until the end of the nineteenth century that the coal requirements of steam engines had fallen enough for steamships to cover the distance between China and Britain. 35. E. Baines, 1835, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great

…

The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 165. 63. Epstein, 1928, The Automobile Industry, 16. 64. Wayne Rasmussen writes: “In general the task for which steam engines proved to be most useful was threshing grain. The engines were too heavy and cumbersome for most other farm work. The peak in the manufacture

…

of steam engines for agriculture came in 1913, when 10,000 of them were made” (1982, “The Mechanization of Agriculture,” Scientific American 247 [3]: 82). 65. On

…

Review 88 (3): 363–87. Kaldor, N. 1957. “A Model of Economic Growth.” Economic Journal 67 (268): 591–624. Kanefsky, J., and J. Robey. 1980. “Steam Engines in 18th-Century Britain: A Quantitative Assessment.” Technology and Culture 21 (2): 161–86. Karabarbounis, L., and B. Neiman. 2013. “The Global Decline of the

…

; mechanical clock as enabling technology for, 47; railroad, arrival of, 108; rise of machines, 99–105; silk industry, beginnings of, 99; social savings of steam engine, 107; steam engine, economic virtuosity of, 107; working class, 98 Fairchild Semiconductor, 359 Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 200 farming: disappearance of jobs, 197, 203; mechanization of

…

, 50; movable-type printing press, 47; nailed horseshoe, 43; navigable submarine, 52; personal computer (PC), 231; power loom, 105; spinning jenny, 102; steam digester, 55; steam engine, 52, 76; stirrup, 43; stocking-frame knitting machine, 54, 76; submarine, 73; telescope, 59; transistor, 231; typewriter, 161–62; washing machine, 27; water frame, 102

…

segregation, 26 Solow, Robert, 4, 180, 206, 325 speech recognition technology, 306 Spence, Michael, 292 spinning jenny, 102 spousal employment, 240 Sprague, Frank J., 152 steam engine: development of, 73; economic virtuosity of, 107; impact of on aggregate growth, 136; universal application of, 249 steel production, changed nature of, 13 Stephenson, George

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-But Some Don't

by Nate Silver  · 31 Aug 2012  · 829pp  · 186,976 words

starting anywhere from the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. I choose the year 1775 somewhat arbitrarily as it coincides with the invention of James Watt’s steam engine and because it is a nice round number. 2. Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein  · 15 Sep 2014  · 829pp  · 229,566 words

had signed onto the demand to cut foreign aid in favor of local disaster relief. Of course Britain—the nation that invented the coal-fired steam engine—has been emitting industrial levels of carbon for longer than any nation on earth and therefore bears a particularly great responsibility to increase, as opposed

…

replacement workers in rural areas was difficult. Beginning in 1776, a Scottish engineer named James Watt perfected and manufactured a power source that offered solutions to all these vulnerabilities. Lawyer and historian Barbara Freese describes Watt’s steam engine as “perhaps the most important invention in the creation of the modern world”—and with

…

.25 By adding a separate condenser, air pump, and later a rotary mechanism to an older model, Watt was able to make the coal-fired steam engine vastly more powerful and adaptable than its predecessors. In contrast, the new machines could power a broad range of industrial operations, including, eventually, boats. For

…

compared with coal. For one thing, it was free, while coal needed to be continually re-purchased. And contrary to the widespread belief that the steam engine provided more energy than water wheels, the two were actually comparable, with the larger wheels packing several times more horsepower than their coal-powered rivals

…

decidedly cheaper.”26 As Britain’s urban population ballooned, two factors tipped the balance in favor of the steam engine. The first was the new machine’s insulation from nature’s fluctuations: unlike water wheels, steam engines worked at the same rate all the time, so long as there was coal to feed them

…

and the machinery wasn’t broken. The flow rates of rivers were of no concern. Steam engines also worked anywhere, regardless of the geography, which meant that factory owners could shift production from more remote areas to cities like London, Manchester, and

…

, making it far easier to fire troublemakers and put down strikes. As an 1832 article written by a British economist explained, “The invention of the steam-engine has relieved us from the necessity of building factories in inconvenient situations merely for the sake of a waterfall.” Or as one of Watt’s

…

annex countries in distant lands. As the Earl of Liverpool put it in a public meeting to memorialize James Watt in 1824, “Be the winds friendly or be they contrary, the power of the Steam Engine overcomes all difficulties. . . . Let the wind blow from whatever quarter it may, let the destination of our force

…

be to whatever part of the world it may, you have the power and the means, by the Steam Engine, of applying that force at the proper time and in the proper manner.”28 Not until the advent of electronic trading would commerce feel itself

…

the 1800s could now go wherever labor was cheapest and most exploitable, and wherever resources were most plentiful and valuable. As the author of a steam engine manual wrote in the mid-1830s, “Its mighty services are always at our command, whether in winter or in summer, by day or by night

…

. “Nature can be conquered,” Watt reportedly said, “if we can but find her weak side.”30 Little wonder then that the introduction of Watt’s steam engine coincided with explosive levels of growth in British manufacturing, such that in the eighty years between 1760 and 1840, the country went from importing 2

…

Daly and Joshua Farley point out that Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776—the same year that Watt produced his first commercial steam engine. “It is no coincidence,” they write, “that the market economy and fossil fuel economy emerged at essentially the exact same time. . . . New technologies and vast

…

earth is the reverse of the one we have assumed for three centuries.”35 For one of those centuries, a huge white marble statue of James Watt dominated St. Paul’s chapel in Westminster Abbey, commemorating a man who “enlarged the resources of his Country” and “increased the power of Man.” And

…

political practice to a symptom of “command and control environmentalism.” Using messaging that would have fit right in at a Heartland conference three decades later, James Watt, Reagan’s much despised interior secretary, accused greens of using environmental fears “as a tool to achieve a greater objective,” which he claimed was “centralized

…

Joseph Banks, described by a British colonial official as “the staunchest imperialist of the day.”21 During his tenure, the society counted among its fellows James Watt, the steam engine pioneer, and his business partner, Matthew Boulton—the two men most responsible for launching the age of coal. As the questions hanging on the

…

the swells as they come, but doing some pretty fancy tricks along the way. It was precisely this need to adapt ourselves to nature that James Watt’s steam engine purportedly liberated us from in the late 1770s, when it freed factory owners from having to find the best waterfalls, and ship captains from

…

worrying about the prevailing winds. As Andreas Malm writes, the first commercial steam engine “was appreciated for having no ways or places of its own, no external laws, no residual existence outside that brought forth by its proprietors; it

…

degree of responsibility to cut its emissions as, say, Britain, which has been accumulating wealth and emitting industrial levels of carbon dioxide ever since James Watt introduced his successful steam engine in 1776?35 Of course not. That is why 195 countries, including the United States, ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate

…

21 (2013): 31. 27. J. R. McCulloch [unsigned], “Babbage on Machinery and Manufactures,” Edinburgh Review 56 (January 1833): 313–32; François Arago, Historical Eloge of James Watt, trans. James Patrick Muirhead (London: J. Murray, 1839), 150. 28. C. H. Turner, Proceedings of the Public Meeting Held at Freemasons’ Hall, on the 18th

…

June, 1824, for Erecting a Monument to the Late James Watt (London: J. Murray, 1824), pp. 3–4, as cited in Andreas Malm, “Steam: Nineteenth-Century Mechanization and the Power of Capital,” in Ecology and Power

…

. 29. M. A. Alderson, An Essay on the Nature and Application of Steam: With an Historical Notice of the Rise and Progressive Improvement of the Steam-Engine (London: Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper, 1834), 44. 30. Asa Briggs, The Power of Steam: An Illustrated History of the World’s Steam Age (Chicago: University

…

–57, 462 industrialized nations, see developed world Industrial Revolution, 18, 25, 157, 175–76, 177, 409 colonialism and, 171, 175, 457 slavery and, 415–16 steam engine in, 171–73 infertility, in humans: environmental damage and, 424–25, 428–30 stress and, 437 infertility, in marine life: BP spill and, 431–33

…

: extractive industry and, 83, 94, 295, 296, 332, 344–47 from fracking, 328–29, 332, 344, 346 water power, 16, 101, 215 of factories, 171 steam engine vs., 171–72 Waters, Donny, 431, 432 Watt, James, 171–75, 204, 266, 394, 410 Waxman-Markey, 227 wealth: concentration of, 154, 155 decentralization of

Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World

by Deirdre N. McCloskey  · 15 Nov 2011  · 1,205pp  · 308,891 words

Bean Counters: The Triumph of the Accountants and How They Broke Capitalism

by Richard Brooks  · 23 Apr 2018  · 398pp  · 105,917 words

Energy and Civilization: A History

by Vaclav Smil  · 11 May 2017

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson  · 20 Mar 2012  · 547pp  · 172,226 words

Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI

by John Cassidy  · 12 May 2025  · 774pp  · 238,244 words

Empty Vessel: The Story of the Global Economy in One Barge

by Ian Kumekawa  · 6 May 2025  · 422pp  · 112,638 words

How We Got Here: A Slightly Irreverent History of Technology and Markets

by Andy Kessler  · 13 Jun 2005  · 218pp  · 63,471 words

The Ages of Globalization

by Jeffrey D. Sachs  · 2 Jun 2020

Energy: A Human History

by Richard Rhodes  · 28 May 2018  · 653pp  · 155,847 words

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

by Ellen Ruppel Shell  · 2 Jul 2009  · 387pp  · 110,820 words

Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity

by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson  · 15 May 2023  · 619pp  · 177,548 words

Open: The Story of Human Progress

by Johan Norberg  · 14 Sep 2020  · 505pp  · 138,917 words

Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought

by Andrew W. Lo  · 3 Apr 2017  · 733pp  · 179,391 words

I Am a Strange Loop

by Douglas R. Hofstadter  · 21 Feb 2011  · 626pp  · 181,434 words

Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons

by Peter Barnes  · 29 Sep 2006  · 207pp  · 52,716 words

Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex

by Rupert Darwall  · 2 Oct 2017  · 451pp  · 115,720 words

Head, Hand, Heart: Why Intelligence Is Over-Rewarded, Manual Workers Matter, and Caregivers Deserve More Respect

by David Goodhart  · 7 Sep 2020  · 463pp  · 115,103 words

The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind

by Jan Lucassen  · 26 Jul 2021  · 869pp  · 239,167 words

The Nature of Technology

by W. Brian Arthur  · 6 Aug 2009  · 297pp  · 77,362 words

It's Better Than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear

by Gregg Easterbrook  · 20 Feb 2018  · 424pp  · 119,679 words

The Glass Cage: Automation and Us

by Nicholas Carr  · 28 Sep 2014  · 308pp  · 84,713 words

The Insatiable Machine

by Trevor Jackson  · 15 Mar 2026  · 270pp  · 104,133 words

Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization

by Jeff Rubin  · 19 May 2009  · 258pp  · 83,303 words

The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America

by Steven Johnson  · 26 Dec 2008  · 200pp  · 60,987 words

World Economy Since the Wars: A Personal View

by John Kenneth Galbraith  · 14 May 1994  · 293pp  · 91,412 words

Ellul, Jacques-The Technological Society-Vintage Books (1964)

by Unknown  · 7 Jun 2012

The Driving Machine: A Design History of the Car

by Witold Rybczynski  · 8 Oct 2024  · 187pp  · 65,740 words

Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data

by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Thomas Ramge  · 27 Feb 2018  · 267pp  · 72,552 words

The Globotics Upheaval: Globalisation, Robotics and the Future of Work

by Richard Baldwin  · 10 Jan 2019  · 301pp  · 89,076 words

The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and Its Solutions

by Jason Hickel  · 3 May 2017  · 332pp  · 106,197 words

The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset That Drives Extraordinary Results

by Andrew McAfee  · 14 Nov 2023  · 381pp  · 113,173 words

Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline

by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson  · 5 Feb 2019  · 280pp  · 83,299 words

Culture & Empire: Digital Revolution

by Pieter Hintjens  · 11 Mar 2013  · 349pp  · 114,038 words

DarkMarket: Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You

by Misha Glenny  · 3 Oct 2011  · 274pp  · 85,557 words

The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention

by William Rosen  · 31 May 2010  · 420pp  · 124,202 words

Power Hungry: The Myths of "Green" Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future

by Robert Bryce  · 26 Apr 2011  · 520pp  · 129,887 words

The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World

by Oliver Morton  · 26 Sep 2015  · 469pp  · 142,230 words

The Power Makers

by Maury Klein  · 26 May 2008  · 782pp  · 245,875 words

The Dawn of Innovation: The First American Industrial Revolution

by Charles R. Morris  · 1 Jan 2012  · 456pp  · 123,534 words

Why the West Rules--For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

by Ian Morris  · 11 Oct 2010  · 1,152pp  · 266,246 words

Good Money: Birmingham Button Makers, the Royal Mint, and the Beginnings of Modern Coinage, 1775-1821

by George Anthony Selgin  · 13 Jul 2008  · 386pp

Piracy : The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates

by Adrian Johns  · 5 Jan 2010  · 636pp  · 202,284 words

The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution

by David Wootton  · 7 Dec 2015  · 1,197pp  · 304,245 words

The Elements of Choice: Why the Way We Decide Matters

by Eric J. Johnson  · 12 Oct 2021  · 362pp  · 103,087 words

Scotland Travel Guide

by Lonely Planet

The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism

by Joyce Appleby  · 22 Dec 2009  · 540pp  · 168,921 words

Empire of Cotton: A Global History

by Sven Beckert  · 2 Dec 2014  · 1,000pp  · 247,974 words

Life's Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code

by Matthew Cobb  · 6 Jul 2015  · 608pp  · 150,324 words

Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, From Atoms to Economies

by Cesar Hidalgo  · 1 Jun 2015  · 242pp  · 68,019 words

The Rough Guide to England

by Rough Guides  · 29 Mar 2018

Europe: A History

by Norman Davies  · 1 Jan 1996

The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal

by M. Mitchell Waldrop  · 14 Apr 2001

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

by Matt Ridley  · 17 May 2010  · 462pp  · 150,129 words

An Empire of Wealth: Rise of American Economy Power 1607-2000

by John Steele Gordon  · 12 Oct 2009  · 519pp  · 148,131 words

Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

by Bhu Srinivasan  · 25 Sep 2017  · 801pp  · 209,348 words

Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing Before Cybernetics

by David A. Mindell  · 10 Oct 2002  · 759pp  · 166,687 words

More From Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources – and What Happens Next

by Andrew McAfee  · 30 Sep 2019  · 372pp  · 94,153 words

The First Tycoon

by T.J. Stiles  · 14 Aug 2009

Einstein's Fridge: How the Difference Between Hot and Cold Explains the Universe

by Paul Sen  · 16 Mar 2021  · 444pp  · 111,837 words

Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible

by William N. Goetzmann  · 11 Apr 2016  · 695pp  · 194,693 words

A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy

by Joel Mokyr  · 8 Jan 2016  · 687pp  · 189,243 words

Civilization: The West and the Rest

by Niall Ferguson  · 28 Feb 2011  · 790pp  · 150,875 words

Frommer's England 2011: With Wales

by Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince  · 2 Jan 2010

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor

by David S. Landes  · 14 Sep 1999  · 1,060pp  · 265,296 words

The Regency Revolution: Jane Austen, Napoleon, Lord Byron and the Making of the Modern World

by Robert Morrison  · 3 Jul 2019

Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age

by W. Bernard Carlson  · 11 May 2013  · 733pp  · 184,118 words

Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier

by Edward L. Glaeser  · 1 Jan 2011  · 598pp  · 140,612 words

Fred Dibnah's Age of Steam

by David Hall and Fred Dibnah  · 1 Jan 2003  · 229pp  · 71,872 words

The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control

by Jacob Siegel  · 24 Mar 2026  · 348pp  · 103,246 words

We-Think: Mass Innovation, Not Mass Production

by Charles Leadbeater  · 9 Dec 2010  · 313pp  · 84,312 words

The Rise of the Network Society

by Manuel Castells  · 31 Aug 1996  · 843pp  · 223,858 words

Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, From the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First

by Frank Trentmann  · 1 Dec 2015  · 1,213pp  · 376,284 words

Darwin Among the Machines

by George Dyson  · 28 Mar 2012  · 463pp  · 118,936 words

More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy

by Philip Coggan  · 6 Feb 2020  · 524pp  · 155,947 words

Origin Story: A Big History of Everything

by David Christian  · 21 May 2018  · 334pp  · 100,201 words

The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous

by Joseph Henrich  · 7 Sep 2020  · 796pp  · 223,275 words

The Miracle Pill

by Peter Walker  · 21 Jan 2021  · 372pp  · 98,659 words

Hacking Capitalism

by Söderberg, Johan; Söderberg, Johan;

Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech

by Brian Merchant  · 25 Sep 2023  · 524pp  · 154,652 words

The Origins of Efficiency

by Brian Potter  · 15 Feb 2025  · 474pp  · 134,246 words

The Men Who United the States: America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible

by Simon Winchester  · 14 Oct 2013  · 501pp  · 145,097 words

Great Britain

by David Else and Fionn Davenport  · 2 Jan 2007

The Map That Changed the World

by Simon Winchester  · 1 Jan 2001  · 361pp  · 105,938 words

Fire and Steam: A New History of the Railways in Britain

by Christian Wolmar  · 1 Mar 2009  · 493pp  · 145,326 words

Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life

by Adam Greenfield  · 29 May 2017  · 410pp  · 119,823 words

Paper: A World History

by Mark Kurlansky  · 3 Apr 2016  · 485pp  · 126,597 words

Them And Us: Politics, Greed And Inequality - Why We Need A Fair Society

by Will Hutton  · 30 Sep 2010  · 543pp  · 147,357 words

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation

by Jon Gertner  · 15 Mar 2012  · 550pp  · 154,725 words

The Great Railroad Revolution

by Christian Wolmar  · 9 Jun 2014  · 523pp  · 159,884 words

The Battery: How Portable Power Sparked a Technological Revolution

by Henry Schlesinger  · 16 Mar 2010  · 336pp  · 92,056 words

Against Intellectual Monopoly

by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine  · 6 Jul 2008  · 607pp  · 133,452 words

The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor

by William Easterly  · 4 Mar 2014  · 483pp  · 134,377 words

Game Over Press Start to Continue

by David Sheff and Andy Eddy  · 1 Jan 1993  · 500pp  · 156,079 words

The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations

by Jacob Soll  · 28 Apr 2014  · 382pp  · 105,166 words

Firepower: How Weapons Shaped Warfare

by Paul Lockhart  · 15 Mar 2021

Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities

by Vaclav Smil  · 23 Sep 2019

Andrew Carnegie

by David Nasaw  · 15 Nov 2007  · 1,230pp  · 357,848 words

Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future

by Ed Conway  · 15 Jun 2023  · 515pp  · 152,128 words

The Wood Age: How One Material Shaped the Whole of Human History

by Roland Ennos  · 18 Feb 2021

Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach

by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig  · 14 Jul 2019  · 2,466pp  · 668,761 words

MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World

by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams  · 28 Sep 2010  · 552pp  · 168,518 words

When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Rise of the Middle Kingdom

by Martin Jacques  · 12 Nov 2009  · 859pp  · 204,092 words

The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance

by Henry Petroski  · 2 Jan 1990  · 490pp  · 150,172 words

A Short History of Nearly Everything

by Bill Bryson  · 5 May 2003  · 654pp  · 204,260 words

England

by David Else  · 14 Oct 2010

Wonders of the Universe

by Brian Cox and Andrew Cohen  · 12 Jul 2011

The Great Surge: The Ascent of the Developing World

by Steven Radelet  · 10 Nov 2015  · 437pp  · 115,594 words

The Misfit Economy: Lessons in Creativity From Pirates, Hackers, Gangsters and Other Informal Entrepreneurs

by Alexa Clay and Kyra Maya Phillips  · 23 Jun 2015  · 210pp  · 56,667 words

Fully Automated Luxury Communism

by Aaron Bastani  · 10 Jun 2019  · 280pp  · 74,559 words

The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth

by Tim Flannery  · 10 Jan 2001  · 427pp  · 111,965 words

Owning the Earth: The Transforming History of Land Ownership

by Andro Linklater  · 12 Nov 2013  · 603pp  · 182,826 words

The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World

by Daniel Yergin  · 14 May 2011  · 1,373pp  · 300,577 words

The Burning Answer: The Solar Revolution: A Quest for Sustainable Power

by Keith Barnham  · 7 May 2015  · 433pp  · 124,454 words

Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence

by James Lovelock  · 27 Aug 2019  · 94pp  · 33,179 words

About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks

by David Rooney  · 16 Aug 2021  · 306pp  · 84,649 words

Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World

by Simon Winchester  · 19 Jan 2021  · 486pp  · 139,713 words

Investment: A History

by Norton Reamer and Jesse Downing  · 19 Feb 2016

The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity

by Toby Ord  · 24 Mar 2020  · 513pp  · 152,381 words

Where Good Ideas Come from: The Natural History of Innovation

by Steven Johnson  · 5 Oct 2010  · 298pp  · 81,200 words

Eat People: And Other Unapologetic Rules for Game-Changing Entrepreneurs

by Andy Kessler  · 1 Feb 2011  · 272pp  · 64,626 words

Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology

by Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili  · 14 Oct 2014  · 476pp  · 120,892 words

Time Lord: Sir Sandford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time

by Clark Blaise  · 27 Oct 2000  · 240pp  · 75,304 words

Crossing the Heart of Africa: An Odyssey of Love and Adventure

by Julian Smith  · 7 Dec 2010  · 311pp  · 89,785 words

Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea

by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge  · 4 Mar 2003  · 196pp  · 57,974 words

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

by Jeremy Rifkin  · 31 Mar 2014  · 565pp  · 151,129 words

The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis

by Jeremy Rifkin  · 31 Dec 2009  · 879pp  · 233,093 words

Warnings

by Richard A. Clarke  · 10 Apr 2017  · 428pp  · 121,717 words

Black Box Thinking: Why Most People Never Learn From Their Mistakes--But Some Do

by Matthew Syed  · 3 Nov 2015  · 410pp  · 114,005 words

Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History

by Kurt Andersen  · 14 Sep 2020  · 486pp  · 150,849 words

The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations

by Daniel Yergin  · 14 Sep 2020

Losing Earth: A Recent History

by Nathaniel Rich  · 4 Aug 2018  · 148pp  · 45,249 words

The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality

by Oded Galor  · 22 Mar 2022  · 426pp  · 83,128 words

Invention: A Life

by James Dyson  · 6 Sep 2021  · 312pp  · 108,194 words

The AI Economy: Work, Wealth and Welfare in the Robot Age

by Roger Bootle  · 4 Sep 2019  · 374pp  · 111,284 words

Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future

by Elizabeth Kolbert  · 15 Mar 2021  · 221pp  · 59,755 words

Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking

by Michael Bhaskar  · 2 Nov 2021

Blood, Iron, and Gold: How the Railways Transformed the World

by Christian Wolmar  · 1 Mar 2010  · 424pp  · 140,262 words

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

by Robert Tressell  · 31 Dec 1913  · 768pp  · 291,079 words

Britain Etc

by Mark Easton  · 1 Mar 2012  · 411pp  · 95,852 words

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies

by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee  · 20 Jan 2014  · 339pp  · 88,732 words

The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans

by Mark Lynas  · 3 Oct 2011  · 369pp  · 98,776 words

Capitalism: Money, Morals and Markets

by John Plender  · 27 Jul 2015  · 355pp  · 92,571 words

The Taste of Empire: How Britain's Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World

by Lizzie Collingham  · 2 Oct 2017  · 452pp  · 130,041 words

On Time and Water

by Andri Snaer Magnason  · 15 Sep 2021  · 272pp  · 77,108 words

In Our Own Image: Savior or Destroyer? The History and Future of Artificial Intelligence

by George Zarkadakis  · 7 Mar 2016  · 405pp  · 117,219 words

The Profiteers

by Sally Denton  · 556pp  · 141,069 words

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

by Jason Hickel  · 12 Aug 2020  · 286pp  · 87,168 words

The Stonemason: A History of Building Britain

by Andrew Ziminski  · 5 Mar 2020  · 256pp  · 84,034 words

Miracle Cure

by William Rosen  · 14 Apr 2017  · 515pp  · 117,501 words

Lonely Planet Scotland

by Lonely Planet

Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time

by James Suzman  · 2 Sep 2020  · 909pp  · 130,170 words

Do Nothing: How to Break Away From Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving

by Celeste Headlee  · 10 Mar 2020  · 246pp  · 74,404 words

The system of the world

by Neal Stephenson  · 21 Sep 2004  · 1,199pp  · 384,780 words

This Sceptred Isle

by Christopher Lee  · 19 Jan 2012  · 796pp  · 242,660 words

Liberty's Dawn: A People's History of the Industrial Revolution

by Emma Griffin  · 10 Jun 2013

Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI

by John Brockman  · 19 Feb 2019  · 339pp  · 94,769 words

A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next

by Tom Standage  · 16 Aug 2021  · 290pp  · 85,847 words

Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World

by Steven Johnson  · 15 Nov 2016  · 322pp  · 88,197 words

Cathedrals of Steam: How London’s Great Stations Were Built – and How They Transformed the City

by Christian Wolmar  · 5 Nov 2020  · 352pp  · 98,424 words

The Domestic Revolution

by Ruth Goodman  · 15 Apr 2020

Life Is Simple: How Occam's Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe

by Johnjoe McFadden  · 27 Sep 2021

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet

by Klaus Schwab  · 7 Jan 2021  · 460pp  · 107,454 words

Guns, germs, and steel: the fates of human societies

by Jared M. Diamond  · 15 Jul 2005

The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch

by Lewis Dartnell  · 15 Apr 2014  · 398pp  · 100,679 words

Utopia for Realists: The Case for a Universal Basic Income, Open Borders, and a 15-Hour Workweek

by Rutger Bregman  · 13 Sep 2014  · 235pp  · 62,862 words

The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-First Century

by Ryan Avent  · 20 Sep 2016  · 323pp  · 90,868 words

Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization

by Vaclav Smil  · 16 Dec 2013  · 396pp  · 117,897 words

The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection

by Michael Harris  · 6 Aug 2014  · 259pp  · 73,193 words

Lonely Planet Scotland

by Lonely Planet

The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention

by Simon Baron-Cohen  · 14 Aug 2020

Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization

by Harold James  · 15 Jan 2023  · 469pp  · 137,880 words

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet

by Klaus Schwab and Peter Vanham  · 27 Jan 2021  · 460pp  · 107,454 words

The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the Death of Capitalism

by Calum Chace  · 17 Jul 2016  · 477pp  · 75,408 words

The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable

by Amitav Ghosh  · 16 Jan 2018

QI: The Book of General Ignorance - The Noticeably Stouter Edition

by Lloyd, John and Mitchinson, John  · 7 Oct 2010  · 624pp  · 104,923 words

A Pelican Introduction Economics: A User's Guide

by Ha-Joon Chang  · 26 May 2014  · 385pp  · 111,807 words

Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing

by Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman  · 20 Nov 2012  · 307pp  · 92,165 words

The Big Oyster

by Mark Kurlansky  · 20 Dec 2006

How to Fix the Future: Staying Human in the Digital Age

by Andrew Keen  · 1 Mar 2018  · 308pp  · 85,880 words

Hawaii Travel Guide

by Lonely Planet

On the Slow Train Again

by Michael Williams  · 7 Apr 2011  · 196pp  · 66,253 words

Discover Great Britain

by Lonely Planet  · 22 Aug 2012

A Short History of Progress

by Ronald Wright  · 2 Jan 2004  · 225pp  · 54,010 words

City: Urbanism and Its End

by Douglas W. Rae  · 15 Jan 2003  · 537pp  · 200,923 words

Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life

by Steven Johnson  · 2 Jan 1999  · 294pp  · 86,601 words

The Rough Guide to Wales

by Rough Guides  · 14 Oct 2024  · 882pp  · 240,215 words

A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload

by Cal Newport  · 2 Mar 2021  · 350pp  · 90,898 words

Makers

by Chris Anderson  · 1 Oct 2012  · 238pp  · 73,824 words

Television disrupted: the transition from network to networked TV

by Shelly Palmer  · 14 Apr 2006  · 406pp  · 88,820 words

Startup Weekend: How to Take a Company From Concept to Creation in 54 Hours

by Marc Nager, Clint Nelsen and Franck Nouyrigat  · 8 Nov 2011  · 179pp  · 42,006 words

The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay

by Guy Standing  · 13 Jul 2016  · 443pp  · 98,113 words

This Is for Everyone: The Captivating Memoir From the Inventor of the World Wide Web

by Tim Berners-Lee  · 8 Sep 2025  · 347pp  · 100,038 words

The Mystery of Charles Dickens

by A. N. Wilson  · 3 Jun 2020  · 336pp  · 97,204 words

To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science

by Steven Weinberg  · 17 Feb 2015  · 532pp  · 133,143 words

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

by Charles Petzold  · 28 Sep 1999  · 566pp  · 122,184 words

Europe by Eurail 2023

by Laverne Ferguson-Kosinski and C. Darren Price  · 8 Jan 2023  · 570pp  · 186,017 words

Swindled: the dark history of food fraud, from poisoned candy to counterfeit coffee

by Bee Wilson  · 15 Dec 2008  · 384pp  · 122,874 words

Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

by John Green  · 18 Mar 2025  · 158pp  · 49,742 words

The Road to Conscious Machines

by Michael Wooldridge  · 2 Nov 2018  · 346pp  · 97,890 words

An Edible History of Humanity

by Tom Standage  · 30 Jun 2009  · 282pp  · 82,107 words

Democratizing innovation

by Eric von Hippel  · 1 Apr 2005  · 220pp  · 73,451 words

How to Be Idle

by Tom Hodgkinson  · 1 Jan 2004  · 354pp  · 93,882 words

Experience Great Britain 2

by Lonely Planet

The Long Good Buy: Analysing Cycles in Markets

by Peter Oppenheimer  · 3 May 2020  · 333pp  · 76,990 words

Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It

by Daniel Knowles  · 27 Mar 2023  · 278pp  · 91,332 words

Blue Mars

by Kim Stanley Robinson  · 23 Oct 2010  · 824pp  · 268,880 words

Free World: America, Europe, and the Surprising Future of the West

by Timothy Garton Ash  · 30 Jun 2004  · 329pp  · 102,469 words

The Rough Guide to Brazil

by Rough Guides  · 22 Sep 2018