The Industrial Revolutionaries

  THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONARIES

  Also by Gavin Weightman

  London River: A History of the Thames

  The Frozen Water Trade

  Signor Marconi’s Magic Box

  THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONARIES

  THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD 1776–1914

  GAVIN WEIGHTMAN

  Copyright © 2007 by Gavin Weightman

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

  First published in Great Britain in 2007,

  by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd.

  Printed in the United States of America

  FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

  eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-5558-4885-9

  Grove Press

  an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  www.groveatlantic.com

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  1 Spies

  2 Mad About Iron

  3 The Toolbag Travellers

  4 The Cornishman’s Puffer

  5 They Kept Their Heads

  6 Some Yankees in the Works

  7 The Railway Men

  8 Cowcatchers and Timber Tracks

  9 Les Rosbifs Go To Work

  10 A Prophet Without Honour

  11 A Blast of Hot Air

  12 Morse Decoded

  13 The Palace of Wonders

  14 ‘A Very Handsome Tail’

  15 The Petroleum Pioneers

  16 The Steel Revolution

  17 Of Scots and Samurai

  18 Horsepower

  19 The Wizard of Menlo Park

  20 The Terror of the Torpedo

  21 The Synthetic World

  Postscript

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  Integrated Illustrations

  p.10. Spinning Jenny, 1811. Arbraham Rees, The Cyclopaedia of Arts, Sciences and Literature, plates, vol. iv, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1820.

  p.22. Cannon boring machine, 1812. Arbraham Rees, The Cyclopaedia of Arts, Sciences and Literature, plates, vol. ii, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1820.

  p.37. Canal scene, 1809. Arbraham Rees, The Cyclopaedia of Arts, Sciences and Literature, plates, vol. ii, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1820.

  p.48. Richard Trevithick’s portable steam engine, Catch-me-who-can, 1814. Courtesy of the Trevithick Society.

  p.67. Guillotine, 1790s. Courtesy FCIT.

  p.90. Fulton’s nautilus, 1798. Public domain.

  p.117. Portable theodolite, 1817. Arbraham Rees, The Cyclopaedia of Arts, Sciences and Literature, plates, vol. iv, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1820.

  p.136. Steam train with cowcatcher, c. 1850. Courtesy FCIT.

  p.152. Navvy. Punch, vol. 28, 1855.

  p.173. German customs, c. 1830. Public domain.

  p.190. Welsh iron works, c. 1840. Public domain.

  p.197. Morse code machine, 1877. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-110409.

  p.213. Crystal palace, 1851. Mary Evans Picture Library, 10071391.

  p.232. John Manjiro, c. 1852. The Museum of Art, Kochi, Japan.

  p.252. James Young’s paraffin lamp, c. 1864. Courtesy of Strathclyde University Archives.

  p.270. Henry Bessemer’s moveable converter, c. 1860. Henry Bessemer, An Autobiography, Offices of Engineering, 1905.

  p.285. Steam vehicle in Tokyo, Japan, 1870. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-10643.

  p.299. Early motor car. Observer, 9 December 1827.

  p.324. Thomas Edison’s electric lamp, 1880. Courtesy of the U.S. National Archives and Records.

  p.342. Outrigged Torpedo Pinnace attacking an Iron-clad. Harper’s Weekly, 14 July 1877. Courtesy of the U.S. Navy Art Collection, Washington, D.C.

  p.361. Justus von Liebig’s laboratory at Giessen, c. 1840. Public domain.

  First Picture Section

  1. Cromford Mill in Derbyshire, 1771. Mary Evans Picture Library, 10090218.

  2. John Wilkinson, c. 1780s. Science Museum, 10419510.

  3. Du Pont powder mills, 1804. Hagley Museum and Library.

  4. Marc Isambard Brunel, c. 1802. Science Museum, 10300792.

  5. Warship, early 1800s. Mary Evans Picture Library, 10043435.

  6. Fulton’s pioneer steamboat, the North River or Clermont, 1807. Science Museum, 10318047.

  7. Richard Trevithick, 1816. Science Museum, 10198838.

  8. Paris to Rouen railway line, 1800s. Science Museum, 10419999.

  9. Opening of Crystal Palace, 1851. Mary Evans Picture Library, 10022873.

  10. Challenge board for Bramah padlock, 1801. Science Museum, 10305355.

  11. The McCormick reaper, c. 1850. Mary Evans Picture Library, 10002154.

  Second Picture Section

  12. Railway conveyances on the Liverpool to Manchester railway, 1834. NRM, 10302114.

  13. South Sea whaling, 1835. Courtesy of The New Bedford Whaling Museum.

  14. American steamer in Japan, 1861. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-1274.

  15. The Battle of Chemulpo Bay, 8 February 1904. Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Gift of Gregory and Patricia Kruglak, S2001.37a-c.

  16. Bicycling, c. 1887. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-3043.

  17. The first bicycle fitted with inflatable tyres, 1888. Mary Evans Picture Library, 10129078.

  18. Motoring in England, 1903. Mary Evans Picture Library, 10040114.

  19. Advertisement for ‘Extractum Carnis Liebig’, 1800s. Copyright Bibliotheque des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, France/Archives Charmet/The Bridgeman Art Library.

  Third Picture Section

  20. American expedition at Yokuhama, Japan, 1854. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-8127.

  21. The ‘Choshu Five’, 1863. Courtesy of University College London.

  22. Justus Liebig, 1843. Science Museum, 10267609.

  23. Henry Bessemer, c. 1870. Rischgitz/Getty Images.

  24. Thomas Edison, 10301363.

  25. Robert Whitehead, 1875. Public domain.

  26. Daimler motocycle, 1885. Science Museum, 10322617.

  27. John Dunlop, c. 1890. Science Museum, 10301166.

  28. Horse-drawn bus in London, early 1900s. Mary Evans Picture Library, 10193105.

  29. Vice-Admiral Petrovich Rozhestvensky, 1904. RIA Novosti/TopFoto, 0828045.

  30. Postcard celebrating the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth, 1905. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-08199.

  31. Army recruits, 1914. Imperial War Museum, Q 53581.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  For those of us who work alone, without the companionship and broad knowledge of academic colleagues, the internet has proved to be invaluable. There is now on the web a wealth of original documentation available for instant download as well as easy access to useful reference books through e-libraries. These resources lift some of the loneliness of the author’s desk, but much more significant is the contact
made with a global network of experts and enthusiasts, not all of them mainstream academics. In researching The Industrial Revolutionaries I had the good luck early on to find in the London Library a book called The Transfer of Early Industrial Technologies to America. In short, succinct chapters there were accounts of the way in which European industrial know-how had been taken across the Atlantic during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The book had been published nearly twenty years earlier, in 1987, and I wondered if I would be able to find the author, Darwin H. Stapleton. It turned out to be as simple as tapping his name into a search engine to discover that he was the Executive Director of the Rockefeller Archive Centre in Sleepy Hollow, New York.

  An email to Darwin Stapleton elicited an immediate response and the beginnings of a dialogue which has been absolutely vital to the authorship of this book. I was introduced to the historical discipline known as ‘technology transfer’ and provided with a hugely rewarding reading list. For well over a year, from the first contact, Darwin Stapleton and I never spoke on the phone. Everything was by email. And, of course, we have never met. Without the internet I doubt that I would have got beyond the book I found in the London Library. As it is, I am hugely indebted to its author.

  Without the London Library I would not have found that important book in the first place and I would once again like to thank all the staff for their help. Most of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century works I consulted I found in the British Library which still astonishes me with the depth of its holdings, such as the potter Josiah Wedgwood’s 1783 pamphlet urging his skilled workforce not to be attempted abroad by French manufacturers. I have also had the privilege of access to the library of the Reform Club where Simon Blundell, the librarian, was helpful as always.

  On the subject of early railways, and the life of William James the railway promoter, I am indebted to Miles Macnair who corrected my chapter and put me right on a number of significant points. His biography of James is to be published in late 2007 by the Railway & Canal Historical Society. In search of information on John Holker, the greatest industrial spy of the eighteenth century, I had the help of Michael Hindley who scoured the libraries of Lancashire for the scant details there are of this Jacobite rebel, who was branded a traitor in England and a hero in France. Brian Stewart in Canada made some helpful suggestions on the Postscript.

  At Atlantic Books I would like to thank Toby Mundy and Angus MacKinnon for suggesting the subject of this book to me and for the kind attention paid to it by Angus, Sarah Norman and Louisa Joyner. At Peters, Fraser and Dunlop I would like to thank Charles Walker and Lydia Lewis for looking after my interests, as always.

  Gavin Weightman

  Highbury

  May 2007

  INTRODUCTION

  In a photograph taken at University College London, in 1863, the five young men look like a modern pop group with their dark suits and oddly cropped hair – a Japanese imitation of the Beatles perhaps. They were, in fact, young revolutionaries, brave-hearted stowaways to London, who were to become powerful and famous in their own country a few years later. In Japan they became known as the Choshu Five, after the clan to which they all belonged, and were celebrated for the part they played in modernizing their country and transforming it into an industrial power.

  The Choshu Five had left Japan illegally and risked their lives to discover the secrets of the success of Western nations. Their rulers, the Shogunate, had effectively sealed Japan off from foreign influences for more than two centuries, tolerating only a few trading posts such as that at Nagasaki in the south. Though in its art and culture Japan was highly sophisticated, the country had remained almost medieval in its economy and industry. In effect, its rulers had abdicated from the modern world and had been able to ignore it until ships were sighted off its coast belching black smoke and moving without sails. When engaged in battle, these dragon-like invaders possessed a firepower that no Japanese battery could match, and when their crews were finally allowed to land, they displayed strange engines which could pull entire carriages of people along a sort of track, and also a device which produced astonishing, almost instant portraits. So the five young samurai had set out to discover how the sort of society which produced such technological marvels might be established in Japan.

  It was in the late 1860s that reformers such as the Choshu Five overthrew the old order, reinstated the fifteen-year-old Emperor and ushered in the Meiji (Enlightened Rule) era which began with a crash course in industrialism. This was so spectacularly successful that Japan was able to inflict a humiliating defeat on Russia in 1904, destroying a large part of the Tsar’s navy. As the lines of battle were drawn up in Europe in the summer of 1914, Japan took the side of the British, whose English and Scots engineers and merchants had taught them in a few years the technological and administrative skills that had been forged over the previous century during the most remarkable period of practical inventiveness in world history.

  The first ‘Industrial Revolution’ had taken shape in Britain a mere hundred years before the Japanese were confronted with its consequences. Nobody had planned this revolution: the rise of the machine age and the mill in a new kind of town – one in which the smoking factory chimney dwarfed the church steeple – had come about in an explosion of innovation, the origins of which remain a matter of historical dispute. What it meant in Britain, however, was the rapid rise of towns such as Liverpool and Manchester, whose populations soared from the 1760s onwards. There was simultaneously a nationwide population explosion as birth rates rose and death rates gradually fell. Britain became reliant on coal for its heating and to fuel its steam engines. In the countryside, if there was coal underground, mining was much more profitable than farming. Digging coal and iron ore and other metals for industry employed a rising proportion of the nation’s workforce. The nation became less rural and more urban as the number of jobs rose in factories and workshops, taking families away from the land. Steam-powered mechanization produced unprecedented wealth as well as new kinds of hardship. But there was no stopping the advance of industrialism once it had begun.

  It took some half a century for the new industrial forces to change the fabric of British society significantly, and for that reason there are those who still argue that the use of the term ‘revolution’ is misleading, if not downright wrong. It seems a Frenchman first coined the sobriquet ‘industrial revolution’ in the 1820s as a kind of counterpart to the earlier, political and non-industrial French Revolution. The term gained currency in the nineteenth century but it was not until 1884 that it became widely used, inspired by the publication, after his death at the age of thirty, of Arnold Toynbee’s Lectures on the Industrial Revolution.

  For Toynbee, the success of Britain in pioneering industrial change and ushering in a new era in world history was not the result of mere mechanical inventiveness. The essential ingredient was a political culture which was receptive to change and – to borrow the eighteenth-century term – ‘improvement’. Old working practices had to be abandoned, old rights had to be torn up, new forms of financing had to be devised, and the whole social and economic fabric of a country had to be loosened up if innovation were to take effect. It was one thing to learn how to build a steam railway – and you could buy the thing lock, stock and barrel with driver and guard by the 1830s – but it was quite another to know where the money was to come from to pay for it, or to decide whose land was going to be annexed for the line and what the fares would be. These were issues the Japanese had to deal with in the 1870s and which other nations, notably France, Germany and Russia, grappled with when they sought to emulate Britain’s industrial successes. For the newly emergent United States, which gained independence at precisely that historical turning point when a new industrial society was taking shape, the impulse to innovate and make use of new technologies was much less inhibited than it was in tradition-bound Europe.

  The Industrial Revolutionaries, therefore, is not just about inventors, nor is it a
catalogue of the kind of machines that drove the novelist Charles Dickens to distraction at the time of the Great Exhibition in London’s Hyde Park in 1851. Lay readers of this book, whose minds numb at the mention of pistons and air pressure, will sympathize with Dickens, who escaped London for most of the Exhibition summer, renting out his house in Tavistock Square and hiding away at Broadstairs on the Kent coast. From there he wrote:

  I find I am ‘used up’ by the Exhibition. I don’t say ‘there is nothing in it’ – there’s too much. I have only been twice; so many things bewildered me. I have a natural horror of sights, and the fusion of so many sights in one has not decreased it. I am not sure that I have seen anything but the fountain and perhaps the Amazon. It is a dreadful thing to be obliged to be false, but when anyone says, ‘Have you seen?’ I say, ‘Yes,’ because if I don’t, I know he’ll explain it, and I can’t bear that.1

  A certain amount of technical explanation is necessary in this book, but it is not intended as a guide to the functioning of any kind of ‘engine’ and it is written in the firm belief that you do not have to know how to build a motor car to be able to say something interesting about the uses to which it has been put and its impact on society at large. In fact, it is argued here that the over-emphasis on the mechanical inventiveness of the British in forging the first Industrial Revolution is extremely misleading. Promoters of railways such as the land surveyor William James were, for example, just as important to their establishment as the men – the Stephensons, say, or the Hackworths – who built them. Plagiarism was, in any case, rife in the early years of industrialism and it is almost invariably impossible to say with any certainty who first invented what. It is much easier, in fact, to knock a few tenacious myths on the head, such as the still-repeated nonsense that the dour and sickly Scot James Watt ‘invented’ the steam engine after watching the lid rise on a boiling kettle.