Discovery and Invention
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Discovery and Invention’
John Heathcoat’s lace-making machine created thousands of jobs, and gave ordinary people clothes they could never have dreamt of.
The industrial revolution improved the living standards of the poor not by robbing Peter to pay Paul, but by making Peter’s luxuries so cheap that Paul could afford them too. This win-win arrangement was made possible by the self-sacrifice and determination of inventors like John Heathcoat (1783-1861).
George Stephenson argued that his steam engines were solar-powered.
Today’s enthusiasts for ‘renewable energy’ have brought Britain’s once-mighty coal industry to an end. Yet judging by George Stephenson’s exchange with William Buckland, the eccentric but brilliant Oxford geologist, there may have been a serious misunderstanding...
Young William’s hat caught the eye of Matthew Boulton, and the world was never the same again.
The invention of the steam engine and the railways changed the world out of all recognition. It might never have happened had the firm of Boulton and Watt, pioneers in the steam engine, not employed a self-taught Scotsman with a very unusual hat.
William Murdoch’s experiments with steam traction impressed his next-door neighbour, with world-changing results.
The clever hand-powered wooden tricycle that a young William Murdoch built with his father made a triumphant reappearance many years later as a miniature steam-powered vehicle. That in turn led to the railway revolution – courtesy of his next-door-neighbour.