The Inventors of the Industrial Revolution.

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An Introduction

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An Essay On The Industrial Revolution

Introduction:
Three material inventions combined to bring the period (the Middle Ages) to a close and to usher in the modern world. In each case the actual origin of the invention is a matter of dispute.

1. The Mariner's Compass seems to have been introduced into Europe by Italian traders at the time of the Crusades, and to have been used in the later Middle Ages by English merchants voyaging to Iceland.
2. Gunpowder was known in the thirteenth century, but was first put to warlike use by the Florentines early in the fourteenth.
3. The printing-press was invented in the first half of the fifteenth century, probably by Lourens Coster of Haarlem, thus, it seems, the invention occurred prior to Gutenberg of Mainz.

Of these three inventions -- the work, not of monks or knights, but of traders and burghers -- the first made ocean navigation possible, the second ended the military domination of the feudal lords, and the third ended the clerical monopoly to learning. Without the first two it is unlikely that the new civilization of the West, jammed between Islam and the Atlantic, would even have survived. Without the third its survival would have been culturally sterile.

There were a large number of 18th century inventors, some known and of whom much has been written, a few of whom to which we shall shortly refer; but there were a greater number whose names and the nature of their inventions have been lost to history. T. S. Ashton thought that it is likely that we have laid too much emphasis on these well known inventors and "too little on those, who, by adding one tiny device to another, or modifying this or that process, prepared the way for such men." (An Economic History of England: The 18th Century.)

It was Adam Smith, who, in 1776, speculated as to what it was that drove men to be inventive.

"... much labour is facilitated and abridged by the application of proper machinery. It is unnecessary to give any example. I shall only observe, therefore, that the invention of all those machines by which labour is so much facilitated and abridged seems to have been originally owing to the division of labour. Men are much more likely to discover easier and readier methods of attaining any object when the whole attention of their minds is directed towards that single object than when it is dissipated among a great variety of things. But in consequence of the division of labour, the whole of every man's attention comes naturally to be directed towards some one very simple object. It is naturally to be expected, therefore, that some one or other of those who are employed in each particular branch of labour should soon find out easier and readier methods of performing their own particular work, wherever the nature of it admits of such improvement. A great part of the machines made use of in those manufactures in which labour is most subdivided, were originally the inventions of common workmen, who, being each of them employed in some very simple operation, naturally turned their thoughts towards finding out easier and readier methods of performing it. Whoever has been much accustomed to visit such manufactures must frequently have been shown very pretty machines, which were the inventions of such workmen in order to facilitate and quicken their particular part of the work. In the first fire-engines, a boy was constantly employed to open and shut alternately the communication between the boiler and the cylinder, according as the piston either ascended or descended. One of those boys, who loved to play with his companions, observed that, by tying a string from the handle of the valve which opened this communication to another part of the machine, the valve would open and shut without his assistance, and leave him at liberty to divert himself with his playfellows. One of the greatest improvements that has been made upon this machine, since it was first invented, was in this manner the discovery of a boy who wanted to save his own labour.
All the improvements in machinery, however, have by no means been the inventions of those who had occasion to use the machines. Many improvements have been made by the ingenuity of the makers of the machines, when to make them became the business of a peculiar trade; and some by that of those who are called philosophers or men of speculation, whose trade it is not to do anything, but to observe everything; and who, upon that account, are often capable of combining together the powers of the most distant and dissimilar objects. In the progress of society, philosophy or speculation becomes, like every other employment, the principal or sole trade and occupation of a particular class of citizens. Like every other employment too, it is subdivided into a great number of different branches, each of which affords occupation to a peculiar tribe or class of philosophers; and this subdivision of employment in philosophy, as well as in every other business, improves dexterity, and saves time. Each individual becomes more expert in his own peculiar branch, more work is done upon the whole, and the quantity of science is considerably increased by it." (The Wealth of Nations, Book 1, Chapter 1.)

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