Who else shaped the manufacturing world - American steel

 The story of American steel making begins in the wake of the Civil War. A number of academics take a start date of 1867 which coincides with the dramatic increase in US territory with the purchase of Alaska from Russia. Steel making though was to focus on the Commonwealth of Philadelphia where there were plentiful reserves of good quality ore. The invention of a process for the mass production of steel from iron by Englishman, Henry Bessemer, provided the key first step. A fascinating article in the journal of the Society for Industrial Archaeology by Henry Sisson entitled A Revolution in Steel: Mass Production in Pennsylvania, 1867-1901 offers a detailed account of both the technical developments and the companies, men and places involved.

In the years after the Civil War, railways were spreading across the vast continent and American steel makers were determined to see off foreign competitors. The Bessemer process was the starting point, but thereafter it was all about improvements in efficiency and also the quality of the finished product. This latter point came into sharper focus when manufacturing moved beyond basic rails to switches and ‘frogs’ ( common-crossing) but more importantly structural steel for bridges and the frames of buildings, eventually the skyscrapers in the 1880s. I shall pick up on some of Sisson’s detail.

He begins with some statistics. Before the Civil War, steel production was limited to specialist uses and amounted to under 12,000 tons per year. Once mass production had started in Steelton, Pennsylvania in 1870, production increased to just under 50,000 tons. By 1900, the country’s steel makers were producing just over ten and a half million tons of ingots and castings. In terms of productivity, the average tons of iron and steel per worker increased from 62 in 1880 to 132 in 1900.

John Fritz was one of the leading engineers and observed that ‘the modern practice of steel making has, in the hands of the mechanical engineer, the metallurgist and chemist, wrought wonders in producing a material which in quantity, physical qualities and cheapness would have been utterly impossible half a century ago, when steel rails, beams, angles and plates were not thought of, and steel was regarded as a luxury of the material of the working artisan’.

The driving force for this revolution was men like Andrew Carnegie who saw cost reduction as the fundamental measure of progress. He had the vision to see that capital expenditure, to ensure he was using the latest technology, was never in vain. The Bessemer process was a starting point; it needed the addition of a patent taken out by Robert Mushet. Renowned engineer Alexander Holley encouraged the holders of the two patents to join together and thereafter Holley installed the updated Bessemer plants throughout the steel making country.

As we saw in the case of Germany, Bessemer couldn’t cope with ore with a high phosphorous content; the answer was found in the open hearth furnace which were installed where needed.

So much for the process of converting iron into steel. American engineers worked at improving the efficiency of blast furnaces producing iron. This iron had to be handled and so mechanical means were introduced. Eventually iron furnaces were relocated close to the converters allowing molten iron to be used. All the time, engineers were looking for ways better to utilise the heat from the furnaces. Appropriately the produce from the converters in the form of rails were laid by the hundreds of miles to bring raw material to the sites and to take the finished products to end users.

It would be wrong to suggest that improvements were not being made in England or Germany, but the USA was spearheading mass production in steel products and this led to massive increases in manufacturing overall and hence to the shift from being an importer to being a major exporter of manufactured goods.

The position of England as described by Carr and Taplin in their History of the British Steel Industry is revealing. The Americans were much taken by the power of electricity and I will be writing about this elsewhere. They employed this power in rolling mills and a variety of other apparatus that improved the efficiency of the steel making process. We know that the British were slow in embracing the power of electricity, they were also the polar opposite of Carnegie in their reluctance to invest. The problem with steel-making was and indeed is that it is capital intensive and machine heavy, and so innovation comes at a price. Carnegie saw this as a price worth paying.

There was another factor. When the demand for steel rails slumped with the substantial completion of the rail network, alternative uses for steel were needed. Carnegie saw them with great clarity in the form of high-rise buildings constructed with a steel frame. The British were more conservative and it took half a century for that method of construction to be embraced in these islands. This was much later than continental European nations. The Eiffel Tower built in 1889 is but one example.

The exports of steel from European countries is also revealing, with England in the lead, followed by Germany and then Belgium. Belgium and indeed neighbouring Luxembourg had rich reserves of ore. But what about France? Carr and Taplin explain that France’s richest reserves in Alsace Lorraine had been taken by Germany. France had sufficient elsewhere for its own use, but not in order to play a significant role in export.

A twenty year period up to the start of the First World war witnessed a massive growth in America’s exports of manufactured goods including machinery and, in particular, electrical machinery, sewing machines and typewriters but also rails and structural steel. The reasons for the increase are intriguing. Firstly, new reserves of iron ore had been discovered near the Great Lakes, ore that was near the surface and very rich in iron. This reduced the costs of inputs which flowed through to the price of the finished product. The price steadied as Andrew Carnegie bought up some three quarters of the reserves. Mechanisation, in particular the use of electricity, in American steel production also reduced costs. A factor outside the control of the Americans was lengthy strike action in Britain in 1912 which left the door open to American goods. The American manufacturers of sewing machines (Singer) and electrical equipment (British Thomson Houston and British Westinghouse) soon followed their export success by setting up manufacturing in Britain.

Steel beams supporting the roof in Washington cathedral

Who else shaped the Manufacturing World - German steel

 In Britain, the relatively large scale production of steel probably began in the mid eighteenth century with the discovery by Huntsman of a process for making crucible steel. This was some seventy years head of Germany and thrived on high quality Swedish ore.

German steel making would become synonymous with the name Krupp and in his book, The Arms of Krupp 1587-1968, William Manchester begins with the story of a family in the little known town of Essen, who, surviving the plague, became merchants and property owners. All this was before the advent of Germany as a nation; indeed, political control vested in the Abbess of Essen. The Krupp family carried on a very small scale business of making small objects from local iron ore, but this amounted to very little. In spite of this, the wealth of the family increased and in the late eighteenth century Alfred Krupp began experimenting with iron smelting to find the illusive and far more useful steel. Prussia, of which Essen, was a part imported English steel, as did most of Europe until the arrival of Napoleon and the effective closing of trade routes with England.

Alfred’s experiments came to little except for the expending of the family’s wealth. In 1826 he died and his fourteen year old son, also Alfred, took over the running of the small family iron foundry. He had all the ambition of his father, but with the vital additions of ability and discipline. He would still promise far in excess of what he could [immediately] achieve, but  achievement would come. One step forward, one step back, but with the occasional lucky break. Alfred travelled widely in Europe to sell his wares and he crossed the channel for surreptitious visits to Sheffield of which he stood in awe as the home of steel. Manchester observes that there was in fact no need to subterfuge since the secret of steel making had long since become public. Alfred returned to Essen doubly determined.

It was the age of the railways with their insatiable appetite for steel. Britain, of course, led the field, but Alfred secured his place with his patent for a seamless tyre (wheel). This sold well and built his company’s strength for Alfred’s next venture: the steel barrelled gun. Big guns at that time was cast from bronze and the military establishment saw no reason for change, also they didn’t believe that an iron barrel would withstand the explosion which  propelled the ball or shot. Alfred was a determined salesman and managed to befriend the Crown Prince Wilhelm, later King Wilhelm I, and, as importantly, Bismark who was about to revolutionise the German military. This led to the sales of some hundreds of guns of various calibres. Key to the success of Alfred’s guns was the fact that they were breach loading, improving the speed of reloading. This, Manchester suggests, put Krupp ahead of Armstrong of whom I wrote in HBSTMW. The breach loading guns were tested in anger in the brief conflict between the German states in the 1860s but they did not do well; a number exploded killing the gun crews. Alfred, a man of poor health and of a nervous disposition, went to ground. He blamed the new Bessemer process for making steel. The truth was that Bessemer did not work well with poor quality ore and the Ruhr, for all its riches of coal, offered iron ore with too much phosphate.

A fellow German, who would become a naturalised Englishman, Carl Wilhelm Siemens (later Sir Charles William Siemens) invented an alternative process that did work with impurities in the ore and I wrote about this in HBSTMW noting that it was embraced in England by Vickers. In what was fast becoming the new Germany it was also embraced by Alfred.

To the fury of just about everyone but himself, Alfred was more than happy to sell guns to whatever nation would pay for them. He tried England, but the government stayed loyal to Armstrong. He tried France, but managed to offend – something he was very good at - and so they stood by Schneider. Russia proved good customers, but his own Prussia blew hot and cold, although in the event of the Franco-Prussian war, more hot than cold. Krupp had equipped the Prussian army with five hundred steel breach loading cannon. Notwithstanding this, commentators confidently expected Emperor Louis Napoleon to follow in the footsteps of his great forebear and send the Prussians packing. The reality was the opposite, with the Krupp ordnance wreaking havoc among the French who really stood no chance.

This came just before the unification of Germany in 1871 after which Manchester suggests ‘the fathers of modern warfare were Alfred Krupp and Werner von Siemens with his telegraph’. He had earlier observed that three companies: Krupp, Schneider and Armstrong comprised a ‘deadly triumvirate’. However, yet again the Prussian high command remained reluctant to give their wholehearted backing to Krupp, being wedded to brass cannon. Manchester also points to the failure of Schneider, explaining that their production had suffered from communist agitators and that they remained, then, attached to the bronze cannon refusing even the reinforced wrought iron cannon of Joseph Whitworth. Nevertheless, French reparations following the German victory fuelled industrial activity making it a golden era for Krupp who further increased his reserves of iron ore this time in Spain where the ore was pure enough for the Bessemer process. As so often with fuel driven industrial activity, the boom was followed by a crash which echoed over the other side of the Atlantic to be felt by Edison and Westinghouse as they battled over which system of electricity transmission would prevail. I write about this in another post.

The crash hit even Krupp and he only kept going having agreed to stringent conditions imposed by his bankers. Meanwhile the Krupp works were producing rails by the mile and his patent seamless wheels by the thousand all for the massive expansion of American railways. It wasn’t only Germany; Belgium and, in England, Vickers were also supplying massive quantities over the Atlantic.

As Alfred neared the end of his life, he could look with immense pride at what he had created. His company was big in every sense. Manchester writes, ’with a fleet of ships in the Netherlands, ore fields in Spain and agents in every major capital, he had become an international institution.’ He goes on to list ‘chains with links as large as a man’s head’, ‘looming gantries with rivets wider than fists’. At the Philadelphia exhibition in 1876, Krupp exhibited a 60 ton cannon which fired shells weighing half a ton.

Not only was his company big, but its reach was really phenomenal. Krupp was said to supply the armies of some forty-six nations including Russia, Austria, China and Japan. There was still an exception, German military stuck firmly with bronze cannon and try as he might Alfred could not convince them otherwise.

Alfred was succeeded by his son Fritz at about the same time as the new Kaiser, Wilhelm II succeeded his father. The two men hit it off and the Krupp empire became even more clearly aligned with that of the Prussian state.

Krupp’s range of activity was growing. They were approached by Rudolf Diesel who insisted that his engine should be made of steel. A 32 hp diesel engine resulted in 1897. Hiram Maxim invited Krupp to manufacture his machine guns which used smokeless gunpowder (ballistite) invented by Alfred Nobel.

In terms of other weaponry, a race was underway not only between opposing nations and indeed opposing manufacturers, but between attack and defence. Fritz had witnessed the armour plating on war ships becoming as much as two feet thick and so incredibly heavy. Was there an alternative? Engineers experimented with alloys and came up with Nickel Steel which was not only as strong but could be used in cannon making all argument about bronze firmly obsolete. So guns became more powerful and shells more lethal. A  further improvement to steel armour came with carbon steel, the patents for which were made available under licence to Krupp, Vickers, Armstrong, Schneider, Carnegie and Bethlehem steel.

The storm clouds, though, were gathering. The American steel works were growing and would soon be very much larger than their European rivals. To make matters worse, once their production met US demand, imports would in effect be banned and Britain, Belgium and Germany would need to redirect their steel production once again to arms. In this they were well placed, a situation further enhanced by Germany’s decision in effect to create a navy under Tirpitz to match the British and the French. Krupp became even busier, now building ships as well as guns.

Germany and Krupp were now irrevocably committed to war when circumstances were right.

Who else shaped the Manufacturing World - The American System of Manufacturing

 Continuing my quest to discover who else shaped the manufacturing world, not unreasonably, I turn to America. 

An entry in the Oxford reference book is clear that America had a system of manufacturing that put it well ahead of other manufacturing nations. An academic article is more cautious looking at the American manufacturing system in the context of four products: guns, wooden timepieces, watches and axes. The system, in short, was to have interchangeable parts which could be machine made in bulk and then put together in the final product, the key being that all this could be done by unskilled workers. The article highlights one drawback that more time is needed for adjustment as interchangeable parts in practice don’t fit perfectly. Nonetheless, there it seems is the ‘system’.

The story of American manufacturing picks up from the accounts of the early settlements where the imperative was to secure food and shelter. Rebecca Fraser’s account of the Mayflower Generation focuses on the struggles with ill-health and the uninviting natural environment; relations with the native population were then not hostile. In time hostility grew as the native Indians took exception to the approach of some settlers. A third imperative was thus security.

As population increased and the infrastructure of society developed, American found itself as an exporter of agricultural produce not least tobacco, sugar and cotton. Imports were of slaves for the plantations but also manufactured goods. These goods would include weapons, agricultural tools, clothing and basic objects for the home.

The war of independence drew a line in the sand as the newly free nation weened itself off dependence on the old colonial power. This didn’t happen overnight and indeed had probably started before independence as Americans would invite in particular textile and arms manufacturers to help them set up their own facilities. As would be the case so often in the way Britain shaped the manufacturing world, the young countries would create new factories with new machinery and so not be incumbered with earlier processes or machines.

This opportunity to start with a clean sheet of paper surely contributed the what became known as the American System of Manufacturing where identical parts would be produced using machines instead of the then traditional more labour intensive and skilled manual process. Another driver of this was the need to move a workforce from agriculture to manufacturing without the time consuming learning of manual skills. The nature of the American republic is important. Where we talk of agricultural workers, we often mean small holders; men and women who had fought their way into self-sufficiency. There would therefore not be many prepared to give that up for the sake of a job in a factory. Equally in the agrarian society there were not skilled mechanics.

One name stands out in addressing this challenge and that was Eli Whitney whose career began in the southern states where he invented the cotton gin to improve the processing of raw cotton. He then moved north and set up in gun making. In order to meet the volumes needed, tasks needed to be undertaken by machines operated by unskilled labour.

Inventions alone were not enough, the creation of the American arms and textile industries was enabled by government purchasing for the needs of the army and so creating a level of demand that justified mechanisation. The position of US Ordnance is interesting. There were two main arsenals in Springfield, Massachusetts, and in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. In time these were supplemented by private manufacturers, principally Winchester Repeating Arms Company and Colt’s Patent Firearms Manufacturing both of which became successful leaders.

The evidence is that by 1851 the American system of manufacture was a known quantity as there is the story of Colt visiting the Great Exhibition and meeting a steam engine manufacturer, Richard Garrett, who was so impressed by Colt’s manufacturing methods that he built the first British factory geared to mass production, the Long Shop.

I can fast forward to the Second World War when Ford tried to make Rolls-Royce Merlin engines. These were handmade, but Ford needed to mass produce. Ford and Rolls-Royce engineers broke down the engine into parts and then into the engineering steps required to make those parts. These steps would be carried out on machines by largely unskilled workers many of whom were women new to the workplace.

Going back to the nineteenth century, America was becoming self-sufficient in manufacturing with one major exception. America, whilst rich in raw material, had only a very small capacity to produce iron and none really for steel, and it was steel that was needed not least for the massive project of connecting American by rail. This meant that not only England, but Germany and Belgium exported steel rails, tyres and other railway equipment including locomotives and rolling stock. I have written in HBSTMW how this export trade boosted British steel making and this was also the case with the German Krupp which I write about in a separate post. The story of the American steel industry is thus another strand which I will cover.

The image is of my mother and father together with the president of Chrysler at their WW2 tank factory which surely epitomised the American System of Manufacturing. You can read more of this by following this link.

Derby and the Museum of Making

 The city of Derby is a home of British engineering and of probably the first textile factory at the Silk Mill. This has been repurposed to tell Derby’s story. The image is of the mill with thanks to the museum.

The Museum of Making takes the visitor through the astonishing array of manufacturing activity carried on in this midlands city really from the eighteenth century onwards. The museum has one floor titled simply assemblage and they suggest that this looks more like a museum store than a curated display. These photographs help to give a flavour

Voltage regulator

The entrance picks up one of the earliest contributions in the Silk Mill itself, an early example of the factory manufacturing system, taken further fifty years later by Arkwright at Cromford Mill

A work in progress paying homage to the Midland Railway

The railways are the subject of many exhibits from rails, signals to telegraph equipment, but no locomotives (you need to go to York for them). There are mock ups from the Derby railway workshops, not least the Intercity 125. It is clear that the Midland Railway based in Derby was a leader.

You can just about see a wooden mock up

Lawnmowers tell of the presence in the city of Qualcast. Fashion wear speaks of the ground breaking work in artificial fibres at British Celanese later part of Courtaulds. There are a number of eletrical equipment manufacturers. Ceramics feature with industrial examples on display; Crown Derby and Denby will be found elsewhere.

There is a Rolls-Royce aero engine suspended from the roof and information boards telling the story of this, the city's most illustrious son which came to its site at Sinfin Lane because the local authority could offer electric lighting. There are on display models of Hawk and other famous engines.

Derby did its job in war time in addition to Rolls-Royce Merlins, there was a huge army Motor Transport depot

You can read more in my books How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines

Overseas exhibitors at the Great Exhibition

 Continuing my attempt to address the question of who else shaped the manufacturing world, I draw on a series of papers given to the Society of Arts in 1852 reflecting upon the Great Exhibition. One such had as its focus machines for working in metal and wood.

The author looks first at what I suspect was a bug bear, the gulf between scientific and practical men and the huge distrust each group had for the other. He then moves to machinery and looks first at early examples before focusing on clock making where he suggests some of the first machines were to be found.

In terms of shaping the manufacturing world, he sees a process of one idea leading on to the next, but, importantly, without national borders. So the British may come up with a new machine, for example for gear cutting, but then the French perhaps would improve on it. He explores wood working machines and again sees the interplay between artisans of different countries.

In relation to America he refers to all manner of contrivance used in workshops including first a foot-mortising machine for wood patented in 1827 by John McClintic of Pennsylvania. He then traces the machine to Liverpool and a patent for improvements granted in 1851. The point he makes is that invention is difficult, but is made much easier the more brains that are brought to bear on the problem. Collaboration is key and in this the Exhibition could offer a meeting place where inventors from different countries could see the fruits of each other’s labour.

Another paper had its focus on philosophical instruments, which was part of the section for which my great grandfather was responsible. The image, with kind permission of Weiss & Son for the post is a knife in the shape of a cross with 1851 blades made by Weiss for the exhibition.

The author lists some of the inventions that had by 1851 become almost commonplace: steam engines, the telegraph, photography and electromagnetism.  He then notes that in relation to agriculture each of chemistry, mechanics and astronomy have made their contribution. Once again he picks up the value of the interchange of ideas between countries.

The benefit of sharing ideas is brought into sharp relief in an encounter with a would be exhibitor who had spent years developing a particular machine only to be told that a number of similar machines had already accepted. He then offers a summary of the categories of instrument before looking in detail at astronomical instruments. He makes the point that would be exhibitors from overseas may have been put off by the risk of damage to their instrument in the course of travel to the exhibition. He then highlights two exceptions from Germany who instruments he praises highly.

Electromagnetism is his next focus beginning with Volta’s discovery in 1800 of voltaic electricity and then Oersted’s work in 1820 on the interaction of electricity and magnetism, from which the electric motor was conceived. We could add to this list of inventors, the English scientist Michael Faraday. The paper’s author instead takes his audience to the United States and a galvanic meter which enabled the measuring of longitude and then an electromagnetic clock.

Levelling and surveying instruments were exhibited by England, France and Belgium. Optical instruments ranged from microscopes to lighthouses. Thermometers were exhibited by the English Negretti and Zambra and the French Fastre. Photography originated in France and at the Exhibition was represented by Germany, Austria and England. Balances attracted a broader following with exhibits from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium , Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and the USA. Calculating machines bring in the name Babbage, but not as an exhibitor. The best instrument was Russian made by Staffel. The exhibition was ‘rich with electric telegraphs’, with the British Electric Telegraph Company’s instruments taking pride of place. Prussia exhibited through Siemens and Halske. Cooke and Wheatstone are praised for keeping the UK ahead in telegraph technology. He concludes his talk by lamenting the lack of reward for British scientists, despite which they labour on.

The presentation on large steam engines begins with a lament on the limitations of the exhibition space which restricted the size of machine which could be exhibited. The well known British names are mentioned first but then a Belgian, French and Dutch, the latter particularly for land drainage. Fire engines were exhibited by France and Canada as well as the UK. Railway locomotives were dominated by the famous British makers. There were then manufacturing machines with Oldham’s Hibbert & Platt textile machinery. France, Belgium and the USA exhibited machines for working with cotton. There is a note that a future exhibition was planned for India. Wool machinery came from Yorkshire but also from France which produced the medal winning Mercier and Company. The most frequently mentioned name was Jacquard and this apparatus was shown as attached to a number of weaving machines. The other French invention of the circular knitting machine for the making of stockings was highlighted as only then recently taking the place of frame-knitting and so saving many hours of work. The section ends with printing machines and a further mention of Applegarth’s advanced machine previously highlighted in Ward’s account of the exhibition.

Who else shaped the Manufacturing world?

I was challenged by the reviewer in the Historian Magazine that How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World didn’t say much about other countries. I could counter by saying that my book’s title implied this. However, her point is important and I am undertaking some explorations to discover what was going on elsewhere.

My starting point, as with my book, is the Great Exhibition of 1851.

James Ward, the celebrated animal artist, wrote a book on the Great Exhibition entitled The World and its Workshops. He is viewing the exhibition from the point of view of a British visitor comparing the produce of his home country with that of foreigners. In relation to this he is keen to encourage the development of other nations for they will then become better customers for British goods.

He focuses in particular on the position of the ‘artisan’ whom he places alongside the manufacturer and the customer. He picks up concerns expressed by Ruskin that the British artisan working in a factory is ‘only a pair of hands’ waiting in the labour market for the chance of being the lowest bidder for employment, instead of going to the capital market to find the highest budder for his services. Artisans should also be artists contributing to the design of what he makes.

Ward makes an interesting comparison with France where there is little child labour. He sees the benefit in this in the better education offered to French children which he suggests equips them with taste where comparing manufactured objects.

He sees the English as supreme in the manufacture of items to meet the ordinary wants and comforts of the world, but lagging behind in beauty of design, artistic conception and skill and in decorative art.

He confesses that his fascination is in machinery. He harks back to his mid-life when machines were seen as the enemy of the artisan, and we can recall the Luddites. Forty years later he sees the machine as the extension of the human being augmenting his manual capacity. 

In terms of inventions, he singles out William Lea for his stocking-frame, Hargreaves, and Jacquard who would delight in seeing his invention improved by a Belgian. I return to Jacquard later.

He makes another interesting observation about raw materials, suggesting that the English habit of buying raw materials from countries purchasing English finished goods may put the English at a disadvantage if better raw materials are available elsewhere. He suggests that the exhibition would offer an opportunity for comparison which could influence future purchasing decisions.

He then turns to the categories of exhibits starting with steel and is clear that ‘the art of making steel of the finest quality is almost exclusively confined to this country’. In France and Germany, whilst the theories are well understood, the resulting product is inferior. Sheffield was the home of steel production as was Manchester for cotton and Leeds for wool.

Russian and Swedish raw materials are praised as superior to the British, but even in Sweden the final product doesn’t match its English counterpart. German steel producers, Krupp and Hundsdecker, are mentioned but not praised.

The position of American is important. We are talking of a period ten years before the Civil War when industry was highly fragmented albeit equally energetic. Giants of steel making like Bethlehem Steel would only start as iron founders in 1856, and not take on the name of Bethlehem Steel until 1899. It would of course go on to produce steel for America’s iconic buildings and bridges.  

Swords, guns and pistols follow on from steel. ‘If due regard be paid to quality as well as to price, Birmingham has no equal on the continent.’ It is worth adding that Ward was impressed by an American product only later to discover that its was derived from an earlier British invention. He was also impressed by Liege in Belgium which he says has become in relation to muskets the Birmingham of the world. He does though suggest that the cost advantage they achieve is the result of using inferior metal in manufacture. He looks in detail at the process of making swords and sees the British as superior in use to both the Damascus and Toledo more decorative blades. In looking at gun making he refers to the Birmingham workshop system suggesting that there is no such thing a single gun maker. He looks at rifles and, once again, sees the superiority of the British.

He then turns his attention to copper, brass and mixed metals for mainly ornamental use. He describes the making of steel pens and then pin-making and wire-drawing and the making of buttons before moving on to electro-plate.

He includes a chapter on typography, lithography and stereotype. This is of personal interest since only four years earlier my great-great uncle, William Smith Williams, had given a paper On Lithography to the Royal Society of Arts. The paper had been prepared in conjunction with Sir Henry Cole who was significant in the creation of the Great Exhibition. Charles Hullmandel, my great-great uncle’s employer, was French and it was from France that lithography came and so perhaps it is not surprising that Ward sees French lithographs as superior. The same is not true of typography where the English have the lead. Stereotype was an English invention and the English were still the masters.

We then arrive at the core of Ward’s reflections, those on machinery. ‘Upon entering the department of machinery in motion, the casual visitor is in some measure amazed and bewildered by the continued whirring and clatter which surrounds him in every direction.’ The first machine is an old had printing press producing barely a score of copies an hour; there is then ‘Applegarth’s latest improvement’ producing many thousands. From there it is textile machinery, the first producing bobbin-net, the second cotton yarn and silk warps and then Ward’s favourite, the Jacquard machine – ‘a monument of man’s intuitive sagacity’.

Siemens Brothers who manufactured the electric motor for the Brighton railway was emphatically British. William Siemens family was German and the two worked closely as did inventors and manufacturers of many nations

Reviews of Vehicles to Vaccines

A fantastic amount of detailed, interesting history - Ian Brentnall on Amazon 

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 March 2024

There’s a huge amount of detail in this book organised into industrial sectors, making it an interesting lexicon of the ghosts of companies and people of our manufacturing past and where our manufacturing is at present.

I had earlier received an affirming comment from Kelvin Bray who was managing director of Ruston Gas Turbines (and its successors) for twenty five years and who provided wonderful material for my chapter on Energy:

You have done a truly outstanding job in condensing a huge amount of data into a very readable, even compelling volume – I was surprised at how much I read on first sight.