The Industrial Revolution in Iron


Book Description

The essays in this volume trace the fortunes of British coal technology as it spread across the European continent, from Sweden and Russia to the Alps and Spain. They supply an authoritative picture of industrial transformation in one of the key industries of the 19th century.




Technological Change and the British Iron Industry, 1700-1870


Book Description

This book describes technological change in an industry that played a central role in the Indsutrial Revolution. While earlier scholars have examined isolated aspects of ironmaking in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, Charles Hyde surveys all aspects of its development. Costs, prices, profits, shrewd leaders, competition, new inventions, and productivity all figure in this story of a key industry during the major period of its evolution. The author's account illuminates not only the nature of innovation in one industry, but the nature of technologial change in general. using new data compiled form the records of the ironmaking concerns, Professor Hyde considers each of the basic economic variables affecting entrepreneurial decisions. He finds that ironmaking advanced through a process of gradual, continuous change rather than through a series of discrete innovations. The rate of diffusion of new techniques corresponded to their profitability when compared to that of existing means of production--a finding that explains that timing of innovation. Charles K. Hyde is Assistant Professor of Social Science at Monteith College, Wayne State University. Originally published in 1977. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.




A Gazetteer of the British Iron Industry, 1490-1815


Book Description

"A new process of making iron, using a blast furnace and a forge, both powered by water, was introduced into the Weald in the 1490s, and spread to other parts of England and Wales from the 1550s. This book provides a history of every ironworks of the charcoal blast furnace period, except the Weald. It also covers early coke ironworks (built before 1815) and water-powered bloomeries (of the previous technology). After introductory material on the industry generally, each chapter deals with the ironworks of one district, including also other water-powered mills processing iron, steel furnaces, early ironworks powered by steam engines, and a few other works. Blade mills (and cutlers wheels), which provided the initial cutting edge for tools and needle mills are not included in those areas where they are ubiquitous. The period covered is an era in the technology of an important industry in Great Britain."--Volumes 1-2, back cover (page 4 of cover).




British Historical Statistics


Book Description

This 1988 reference book provides the major economic and social statistical series for the British Isles from the twelfth century up until 1980-81. The text provides informed access to a wide range of economic data, without the labour of identifying sources or of transforming many different annual sources into a comparable time series.




The Wealden Iron Industry


Book Description

For two periods of British history - the first part of the Roman occupation and the Tudor and early Stuart periods - the Weald of south-east England was the most productive iron-producing region in the country. Looking across the tranquil Wealden countryside, it is hard to identify anything that hints at its industrial past. Yet 400 years ago, nearly 100 furnaces and forges roared and hammered there, the smoke from charcoal-making curling up from the surrounding woods and the roads bustling with wagons laden with ore and iron sows. Many British naval campaigns, including the Spanish Armada, the wars against the Dutch and The Seven Years' War, relied on Wealden iron cannon; the pressures of conflict driving forward the development of iron-producing technology. For a time the economy of the whole area was dominated by the production of iron and its raw materials, providing employment, generating prosperity and shaping the landscape irrevocably. Drawing on a wealth of local evidence, this book explores the archaeology and history of an area whose iron industry was of international importance.




Regions, Industries, and Heritage.


Book Description

The industrial age has proved to be a formative period for Europe. Industrial heritage nowadays bears witness to the development that took place in differently structured regions. This volume presents different paths of industrial development and gives an overview of the concepts of regions, used among economic, social and cultural historians.







The Industrial Revolution in Iron


Book Description

The essays in this volume, each written by an acknowledged expert in the field, trace the fortunes of British coal technology as it spread across the European continent, from Sweden and Russia to the Alps and Spain, and supply an authoritative picture of industrial transformation in one of the key industries of the 19th century. In this period iron making in continental Europe was transformed by the take-up of technologies such as coke smelting and iron puddling that had already revolutionised the British iron industry. The transfer of British technologies was fundamental to European industrialisation, but that transfer was not straightforward. The techniques that had proved so successful in Britain had to be adapted to local circumstances elsewhere, for charcoal-fired techniques proved surprisingly durable. More often than not, as these studies show, coal-fired methods were incorporated into traditional production systems, making for the proliferation of technological hybrids. Overall, it is diversity that stands out. Some European regions (southern Belgium) came near to the British model; others (Spain) persisted with charcoal technology into the late 19th century. Some countries (Sweden) adopted British organisational principles but not the reliance on coal; others (Russia) maintained different iron making sectors - one coal-based, the other loyal to charcoal - in parallel.




Coal in Victorian Britain, Part I, Volume 1


Book Description

Coal is a topic that has been, remains, and will continue to be of significant interest to those concerned with the causes, course and consequences of industrialization and de-industrialization. This six-volume, reset collection provides scholars with a wide variety of sources relating to the Victorian coal industry.




Mastering Iron


Book Description

Veins of iron run deep in the history of America. Iron making began almost as soon as European settlement, with the establishment of the first ironworks in colonial Massachusetts. Yet it was Great Britain that became the Atlantic world’s dominant low-cost, high-volume producer of iron, a position it retained throughout the nineteenth century. It was not until after the Civil War that American iron producers began to match the scale and efficiency of the British iron industry. In Mastering Iron, Anne Kelly Knowles argues that the prolonged development of the US iron industry was largely due to geographical problems the British did not face. Pairing exhaustive manuscript research with analysis of a detailed geospatial database that she built of the industry, Knowles reconstructs the American iron industry in unprecedented depth, from locating hundreds of iron companies in their social and environmental contexts to explaining workplace culture and social relations between workers and managers. She demonstrates how ironworks in Alabama, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia struggled to replicate British technologies but, in the attempt, brought about changes in the American industry that set the stage for the subsequent age of steel. Richly illustrated with dozens of original maps and period art work, all in full color, Mastering Iron sheds new light on American ambitions and highlights the challenges a young nation faced as it grappled with its geographic conditions.




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