Manufacturing: Internal Combustion

 Oil had been discovered in coal mines as a source of combustible fluid and hence power. It could be burnt to heat water and so make steam. It could also be made to combust in an enclosed cylinder, driving a piston. 

The bicycle had sewn the seed, and, particularly, the French began to explore adding power, from internal combustion, to bicycles. Once the famous Red Flag had ceased to control speed on British roads, engineers and entrepreneurs began to build an industry that would dwarf textiles, iron and steel and coal.

Why stay on the ground? Thinking, that had been around since the time of the Great Exhibition, could be given its wings, and man flew. Ships were powered by diesel.

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Manufacturing: the sewing machine and bicycle

 “No useful sewing machine was ever invented by one man; and all first attempts to do work by machinery, previously done by hand, had been failures. It was only after several able inventors had failed in their attempts, that someone with the mental powers to combine the efforts of others, with his own, at last produced a practical sewing machine.’

It is the story of this book: the way one idea builds on another, until finally an answer is found. The sewing machine was ultimately an American invention, vital to the textile industry but also to many homes across the land. It brings in another aspect, how more and more inventions were crossing borders, with people of different nations building on the work of others. It is also the story of how one invention leads to another: first the sewing machine, next the bicycle. You can read more by following this link

Manufacturing and the nineteenth century home

 The seventy years between the Great Exhibition and the start of the Great War had seen great changes in the way many people worked and travelled. Yet, the way food and homewares were produced hadn’t changed a great deal. The local butcher, baker, grocer and green grocer supplied daily needs. A carpenter might make furniture, a seamstress a dress, a cobbler boots, a tailor a suit of clothes. Change thought was afoot, and I seek to tell it through the prism of my father who was born in 1891.

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The house in Dulwich where my father was born. You can read about his remarkable life in Dunkirk to D Day