Georgian Era
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Georgian Era’
The blushing clergyman’s daughter is recognised today as one of the great figures of English literature.
Jane Austen (1775-1817) was not especially well-known in her own day, but has subsequently become recognised as one of the foremost novelists in English. Her dry wit, sparkling characters and radical themes have endeared her novels and herself to millions, not least Winston Churchill.
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.
If Britain is a chessboard, then politicians should remember that the ‘pieces’ are alive, and they generally play a better game.
In The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Adam Smith has been discussing how the character of individuals may affect the happiness of wider society. He sets up a contrast between ‘the man of humanity and benevolence’, who respects others and tries to improve society by persuasion, and ‘the man of system’, who reaches out to move people and peoples around as if they were just pawns on a chessboard.
From performance and composition to instrument-making, Clementi left his mark on British and European classical music.
Muzio Clementi (1752-1832) came from Rome to England as a boy, to become one of the most prolific of British composers, and an internationally respected teacher and performer. An able businessman, he also turned a bankrupt firm of London instrument-makers into a Europe-wide success.
The little County Durham line built by George Stephenson and his son Robert was the place where the world’s railway infrastructure really began.
George Stephenson had already built over a dozen steam locomotives and engineered colliery railways at Killingworth in Northumberland, and Hetton in County Durham. Now his growing reputation had brought him another challenge, a little further south at Shildon, and on September 27th, 1825, the world’s railways began to take their now familiar shape.