My books on manufacturing

My books on manufacturing
My books on manufacturing history

Tuesday, June 28, 2022

My aim in writing HBSMW

Up until the late eighteenth century, Britain was producing just enough goods to meet the needs of its population. Then something changed; the cotton merchants of Lancashire realised that they could produce massively more, and export it. This rapid increase in production kick-started the movement we call the Industrial Revolution. Half a century later, Britain celebrated its great achievement in the full view of the world at a Great Exhibition in London’s Hyde Park. 

May the hundred years that followed, up to the Festival of Britain in 1951, rightly be called the glorious century of British Manufacturing?

Much that is good, which we made in that century, has been made available to the wider world: the steam and jet engines,  railways, radar, rubber tyres and antibiotics. We in turn have much to thank other peoples for: the Flemish for teaching weaving, the French and Germans for the internal combustion engine. There is much to celebrate and be proud of, but it would be wrong to ignore the bad chapters: much of the early revolution was built on slavery and dreadful working conditions for our great-great grandparents. 

Other countries may now be manufacturing more,  but Britain was where it all started, where ideas became inventions, and, indeed still do; where hard working and talented people made their mark. It is a cause for celebration. 

All around the country it is possible to visit restored mills and museums dedicated to industries with strong echoes from those times. Many names will linger in the memory from childhood. But where did they come from and where have they gone? This book aims to offer a glimpse of their story.

The Flying Scotsman

You can buy How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World at Pen & Sword, on Amazon and at WH Smith.

 

HBSMW synopsis by chapter

The Great Exhibition of 1851 celebrated over seventy years of British manufacturing built on invention and hard work, but also slavery and harsh working conditions. A century later, the Festival of Britain pointed to a future of peace built on creativity. They are part of the same story.

In the mid eighteenth century, Britain, like other European nations, was essentially a subsistence economy prospering and declining in line with uncertain harvests. There were a few people growing wealthy on trade with far-away places, but it was still wealth in land that ruled. Then something happened; merchants, who had imported wonderful cotton textiles from India, realised that they could make vastly more money by importing raw cotton and using local labour and the benign climatic conditions of the northwest to spin and weave in Britain. This ignited a process which we now know as the Industrial revolution.

The Great Exhibition showed off its fruits: textiles and textile machinery, steam engines and sewing machines, railway locomotives and steam powered ships, and telegraph apparatus. My great grandfather was there with the surgical instruments his business made. Charlotte Bronte wrote of her visit.

There followed a century of even greater invention: bicycles, electric motors and generating machinery; internal combustion engines powering land based vehicles, ships and aircraft; tin cans, refrigeration and radio; antibiotics, anaesthetics and nylon.

The Crimean War and the two World Wars created a vast armaments industry, but left this country broke and in debt. 

In 1951, an impoverished nation celebrated again with the Festival of Britain, and showed the world the wonderful creativity of the British people, offering hope for a better future.

This book seeks to celebrate British manufacturing, telling its story whilst keeping rose tinted spectacles at bay.

 1. A Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace

An exploration of the names of exhibitors, whence they came and where they went. My great grandfather was there with Surgical Instruments.

2. Trade, Exploration and Shipping

The British, as an adventurous trading people, created the base on which the industrial revolution would be built. This in turn created a shipbuilding industry.

3. Coal and Metal

Coal, as a source of power, was fundamental to the revolution, as was the metal it could smelt and which could be made into machines.

4. Textiles

If trade and coal powered the revolution, textiles were the product which produced the wealth to drive it forward.

5. Steam and Steel

Steam engines powered by coal and made of metal transformed a steady revolution into an explosion of economic activity. We see signs of Britain's influence spreading as the British built railways in France and further afield, and men like Joseph Ruston sold steam pumps to Russia and to the new oil industry.

6. Communication

Steam powered railway trains connected the nation and provided the routes for electric telegraph to push aside the handwritten letter. Mechanised printing and paper making made books and newspapers windely available.

7. Armaments

Steam engines also made armaments, increasingly needed as the rivalry of nations transformed into battle.

8. Manufacturing for the Home

The railways linked towns with each other and with the coast. High Streets appeared with shops selling all manner of fresh and manufactured products to a hungry population.

9. The Sewing Machine and Bicycle

Sewing machines made of metal transformed the production of clothing from cloth already manufactured by machine. The intricate skills of sewing machine manufacture were applied to the bicycle, making cheap transport available to the working man.

10. The Internal Combustion Engine

From the bicycle to move to a vehicle powered by that other fossil fuel, oil, was a logical extension. British manufacturers were at first held back by the Red Flag, but, once it was removed, factories began to appear in places like Coventry, Birmingham and Oxford. Why stay on the ground? Powered aircraft began to be seen in the skies. Ships began to be fuelled by oil.

11. Electric Power

The dynamo opened the flood gates both to the generation of electricity and its use in powering the factories of Britain, in lighting streets and homes and in providing transport for urban dwellers.

12. The Great War

On the eve of the Great War, Britain was the giant of world manufacturing. The trenches of Flanders would see this power, but also that of Germany, France and America. The four years of war witnessed technical advances but drained the nation's resources to the advantage of America who assumed the position of top dog

13. The Aftermath of War

An initial boom was followed by the collapse of traditional industries, with unemployment and depression.

14. The Interwar Years

New industries bucked the trend: motor vehicles, electricity, aircraft, chemicals. New industries begat new centres of population; house building boomed. None of this could protect the country from the crash in the USA

15. Rearmament and the Second World War

For many war began in 1935 with well hidden rearmament. Shadow factories were built to manufacture aircraft safe from enemy bombing. Once again the whole nation went to war, with the motor vehicle factories this time taking the lead followed by electronics and chemicals. Once again the nation emerged victorious, but drained of resource.

16. The Post-war Export Drive

With the coffers empty, the nation had to export its way back into prosperity. The motor industry led the way alongside electronics and chemicals. Once again a post war boom hid the problems facing shipbuilding

17. The Festival of Britain

A century after the Great Exhibition, the Festival of Britain celebrated what it meant to be British. Manufacturing was not centre stage but was ever present with the new white hope of nuclear power and new materials: aluminium used for London Underground trains, fibreglass and rubber used for flooring. It was a time of hope after the deprivation of war.

You can buy How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World at Pen & Sword, on Amazon and at WH Smith.

Monday, June 27, 2022

HBSMW - The Great Exhibition of 1851

'A great people invited all civilised nations to a festival to bring into comparison the works of human skill.' So wrote Sir Henry Cole one of the exhibition's organisers. 

On 1 May 1851, Queen Victoria opened the exhibition in Hyde Park to crowds eager to see this display of British invention. It was held in a building made of steel and 30,000 panes of hand blown glass. Inside were machines, exhibits from all around the country, the Empire and wider world. 

The catalogue to the Great Exhibition, copies of which are in many libraries, is also available online. This reveals many connections, for example with the Stokes Mortar, which was invented by the managing director of the Ipswich engineers, Ransomes, who had exhibited the equipment they were making for the railway companies. For Lincoln dwellers there is an entry for Clayton, Shuttleworth & Co with an oscillating steam-engine but with ‘arrangements simple and compact, suitable for working corn mills, sawing machinery etc

My great grandfather was secretary to the committee of Surgical Instrument makers and he managed the business of J Weiss Co at 62, The Strand. He was presented with a catalogue, the cover of which has been preserved. 

Thumbing through the catalogue, it is interesting to see the names that have survived to this day: Heal & Sons no longer make furniture, but still sell it, Fox Brothers still produce wool textiles, and famously Siemens but the British arm of the family. Winsor & Newton are still active in supplying the arts community as are Rowney now as part of Daler-Rowney.

Most of the thousands of companies exhibiting at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park that summer of 1851 thrived and either died or combined as British manufacturing reached and passed its zenith. 

That year was also marked by the first comprehensive census which offers an idea of how the nation was employed. Textiles Agriculture came top with some two million people; textiles came second at over a million. Domestic service loomed large but so did coal mining and metal working. It was a nation at work.

You can buy How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World at Pen & Sword, on Amazon and at WH Smith.

Manufacturing places - the art of re-invention

My exploration of British manufacturing has been sector by sector and chronological. I am now beginning to join up the dots and explore thos...