Category: Books

When Yarn Was Scarce There Was Less Incentive to Develop Power Looms

(p. 223) Though power looms had existed, at least in concept, for centuries (under his sketch for one, Leonardo himself wrote, “This is second only to the printing press in importance; no less useful in its practical application; a lucrative, beautiful, and subtle invention”), there was little interest in them so long as virtually all the available yarn could be turned into cloth in cottages. This fact reinforced the weaver’s independence; but it also encouraged another group of innovative types who were getting ready to put spinning itself on an industrial footing.

Source:
Rosen, William. The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. New York: Random House, 2010.

Artisan’s Skills Were Still Required for Kay’s Flying Shuttle

(p. 223) Kay’s flying shuttle made it possible for weavers to produce a wider product, which they called “broadloom,” but doing so was demanding. Weaving requires that the weft threads be under constant tension in order to make certain that each one is precisely the same length as its predecessor; slack is the enemy of a properly woven cloth. Using a flying shuttle to carry weft threads through the warp made it possible to weave a far wider bolt of cloth, but the required momentum introduced the possibility of a rebound, and thereby a slack thread. Kay’s invention still needed a skilled artisan to catch the shuttle and so avoid even the slightest bit of bounce when it was thrown across the loom.

Source:
Rosen, William. The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. New York: Random House, 2010.

Taking Away Patents Would Be “Cutting Off the Hopes of Ingenious Men”

(p. 208) For Watt, the theft (as he saw it) of his work was a deeply personal violation. In (p. 209) 1790, just before realizing the extent of what he perceived as Hornblower’s theft of his own work he wrote,

if patentees are to be regarded by the public, as . . . monopolists, and their patents considered as nuisances & encroachments on the natural liberties of his Majesty’s other subjects, wou’d it not be just to make a law at once, taking away the power of granting patents for new inventions & by cutting off’ the hopes of ingenious men oblige them either to go on in the way of their fathers & not spend their time which would be devoted to the encrease [sic] of their own fortunes in making improvements for an ungrateful public, or else to emigrate to some other Country that will afford to their inventions the protections they may merit?

Source:
Rosen, William. The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. New York: Random House, 2010.
(Note: italics and ellipsis in original.)

Mutual Benefits from Ending Labor Market Mismatch

(p.6) This is the Mark Twain people love to quote (“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.” “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way”), and whenever he hits his stride in the “Autobiography,” you feel happy for him — e.g., writing about Virginia City, Nev., in 1863:

“I secured a place in a nearby quartz (p. 7) mill to screen sand with a long-handled shovel. I hate a long-handled shovel. I never could learn to swing it properly. As often as any other way the sand didn’t reach the screen at all, but went over my head and down my back, inside of my clothes. It was the most detestable work I have ever engaged in, but it paid ten dollars a week and board — and the board was worthwhile, because it consisted not only of bacon, beans, coffee, bread and molasses, but we had stewed dried apples every day in the week just the same as if it were Sunday. But this palatial life, this gross and luxurious life, had to come to an end, and there were two sufficient reasons for it. On my side, I could not endure the heavy labor; and on the Company’s side, they did not feel justified in paying me to shovel sand down my back; so I was discharged just at the moment that I was going to resign.”

For the full review, see:
GARRISON KEILLOR. “Riverboat Rambler.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., December 19, 2010): 1, 6-7.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date December 16, 2010, and had the title “Mark Twain’s Riverboat Ramblings.” )

The book under review, is:
Smith, Harriet Elinor, ed. Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.

The Fragility of China’s Red Capitalism

RedCapitalismBK2011-01-04.jpg

Source of book image: http://media.wiley.com/product_data/coverImage300/63/04708258/0470825863.jpg

Red Capitalism is scheduled for release on February 15, 2011. I have not read it, but from early reports it would appear to be a credible account that updates and supports concerns about China’s economy expressed by David Smick (The World Is Curved) and others.

The reference is:
Walter, Carl E., and Fraser J. T. Howie. Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China’s Extraordinary Rise. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2011.

The Smick book mentioned, is:
Smick, David M. The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy. New York: Portfolio Hardcover, 2008.

London’s Albion Mills Was “Likely” Destroyed By Millers’ Arson

(p. 187) The Albion Mills, as it would be called, was built on a scale hitherto unimagined. The largest flour mill in London in 1783 used The Albion Mills, as it would be called, was built on a scale hitherto unimagined. The largest flour mill in London in 1783 used four pairs of grinding stones; Albion was to have thirty, driven by three steam engines, each with a 34-inch cylinder. Within months after its completion, in 1786, those engines were driving mills that produced six thousand bushels of flour every week–which both fed a lot of Londoners and angered a lot of millers.

The Albion Mills was London’s first factory, and its first great symbol of industrialization; its construction inaugurated not only great age of steam-driven factories, but also the doomed though poignant resistance to them. That resistance took the shape of direct action–no one knows how the fire that destroyed the Albion Mills in 1791 began, but arson by millers threatened by its success seems likely– . . .

Source:
Rosen, William. The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. New York: Random House, 2010.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

Supervising a Talented Inventor

(p. 180) Anyone who has ever supervised a talented subordinate with a tendency to set his own priorities will find Watt’s letters familiar: “I wish William could be brought to do as we do, to mind the business in hand, and let such as Symington [William Symington, the builder of the Charlotte Dundas, one of the world’s first steam-engine boats] and Sadler [James Sadler, balloonist and inventor of a table steam engine] throw away their time and money, hunting shadows.”

Source:
Rosen, William. The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. New York: Random House, 2010.
(Note: italics and bracketed words in original.)

Bronson Alcott’s Environmentalist Utopia Failed from Too Much Verbal Manure and Too Little Real Manure

(p. 21) Like many educational theorists, Bronson Alcott found his own children hard to manage. And, again like many visionaries, he also found it hard to hold down a job. As a result, the family moved 29 times in as many years. In 1843 Bronson helped found Fruitlands, a utopian community 15 miles west of Boston. Members of the commune, which numbered 13 people at its height, advocated abolitionism, environmentalism, feminism and anarchism, forswearing meat, alcohol, neckcloths, haircuts, cotton (because it was grown by slaves) and leather (because it was harvested from animals). Their rejection of one more animal product, manure, helps explain why Fruitlands failed after only eight months: this new Eden remained barren in the absence of fertilizer.

In “Transcendental Wild Oats,” a satiric memoir Louisa based on the diary she kept at Fruitlands, one character asks “Are there any beasts of burden on the place?” and is answered, “Only one woman!” In real life, the expulsion of the lone female convert, probably for helping herself to some fish on the sly, left Louisa’s mother, Abigail, to do all the women’s work and much of the men’s — especially since Bronson and his sidekick, Charles Lane, made a habit of disappearing on recruiting trips at the very moment farm labor was required.

For the full review, see:
LEAH PRICE. “American Girl.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., December 12, 2010): 21.
(Note: the online version of the review is dated December 10, 2010.)

The books under review are:
Cheever, Susan. Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010.
Francis, Richard. Fruitlands: The Alcott Family and Their Search for Utopia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010.

Suppression of Cistercians Did Not Delay Industrial Revolution

(p. 138) . . . , the Cistercians’ proven ability to produce substantial quantities of high-quality iron not only fails to prove that they were about to ignite an Industrial Revolution when they were suppressed in the early sixteenth century, it actually demonstrates the opposite–and for two reasons. First, the iron of Laskill and Fontenoy was evidence not of industrialization, but of industriousness. The Cistercians owed their factories’ efficiency to their disciplined and cheap workforce rather than any technological innovation; there’s nothing like a monastic brotherhood that labors twelve hours a day for bread and water to keep costs down. The sixteenth-century monks were still using thirteenth-century technology, and they neither embraced, nor contributed to, the Scientific Revolution of Galileo and Descartes.

The second reason is even more telling: For centuries, the Cistercian monasteries (and other ironmakers; the Cistercians were leaders of medieval iron manufacturing, but they scarcely monopolized it) had been able to supply all the high-quality iron that anyone could use, but all that iron still failed to ignite a technological revolution. Until something happened to increase demand for iron, smelters and forges, like the waterpower that drove them, sounded a lot like one hand clapping. It would sound like nothing else for–what else?–two hundred years.

Source:
Rosen, William. The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. New York: Random House, 2010.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

“A Nation’s Heroes Reveal Its Ideals”

(p. 133) Robert and John Hart were two Glasgow engineers and merchants who regarded James Watt with the sort of awe usually reserved for pop musicians, film stars, or star athletes. Or even more: They regarded him as “the greatest and most useful man who ever lived.” . . .
. . .
(p. 134) . . . the hero worship of the brothers Hart is more enlightening about the explosion of inventive activity that started in eighteenth-century Britain than their reminiscences. For virtually all of human history, statues had been built to honor kings, solders, and religious figures; the Harts lived in the first era that built them to honor builders and inventors. James Watt was an inventor inspired in every way possible, right down to the neurons in his Scottish skull; but he was also, and just as significantly, the inspiration for thousands of other inventors, during his lifetime and beyond. The inscription on the statue of Watt that stood in Westminster Abbey from 1825 until it was moved in 1960 reminded visitors that it was made “Not to perpetuate a name which must endure while the peaceful arts flourish, but to shew that mankind have learned to know those who best deserve their gratitude” (emphasis added).
A nation’s heroes reveal its ideals, and the Watt memorial carries an impressive weight of symbolism. However, it must be said that the statue, sculpted by Sir Francis Chantrey in marble, might bear that weight more appropriately if it had been made out of the trademark material of the Industrial Revolution: iron.

Source:
Rosen, William. The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. New York: Random House, 2010.
(Note: ellipses added; italics in original.)