Carl Franz Bally (1821–99)

Carl Franz Bally was one of Europe’s leading shoe manufacturers in the 19th century and established a brand that is still powerful more ...

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Samuel Bamford (1788–1872)

Samuel Bamford’s autobiographical writings provide a detailed and moving account of the way of life of domestic textile workers during the ...

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Tomáš Bat’a (1876–1932)

The fortunes of the company founded by Tomáš Bat’a reflect the political upheavals that beset central Europe during the twentieth century. ...

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Lieven Bauwens (1769–1822)

Lieven Bauwens was an entrepreneur and industrial spy who spread new cotton manufacturing technologies from England to Belgium and France ...

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Friedrich Bayer (1825–80)

Friedrich Bayer was the son of a silk worker, a member of a family established in the textile industry of Wuppertal, who with others from ...

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Bernd Becher (1931 - 2007) & Hilla Becher (1934–2015)

The photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher (née Wobeser) transformed the ways in which we all view the monuments of past industries, showing ...

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Peter Behrens (1868–1940)

Peter Behrens was one of the most creative architects of the twentieth century, and designed many industrial buildings that were both ...

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Melitta Bentz (1873–1950)

The Melitta coffee filter still used today takes its name from the German housewife-entrepreneur Melitta Bentz who invented and developed ...

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Karl Friedrich Benz (1844–1929)

Karl Benz designed and built the fist practical motorcar to be powered by an internal combustion. He was born in Karlsruhe, the son of a ...

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Louis Bergeron (1929–2014)

Louis Bergeron was a distinguished French scholar who did much to establish the value of the study of industrial heritage with ...

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Annie Besant (1847–1933)

Annie Besant (nee Wood) led a long, varied and eventful life, and for a few years played a crucial role in industrial history. She was the ...

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Henry Bessemer (1813–98)

The ‘Bessemer converter’ was one of the most important technological innovations of the nineteenth century. It enabled the production of ...

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Carl Friedrich (Charles Frederick) Beyer (1813–76)

Carl Friedrich Beyer was the son of a weaver from Plauen in Saxony, and studied at the polytechnic in Dresden, before taking advantage of ...

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Charles Bianconi (1786–1875)

Charles (Carlo) Bianconi was an Italian who transformed passenger transport in Ireland in the decades before the construction of main line ...

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Adolf Bleichert (1845–1910)

Aerial ropeways (sometimes called aerial tramways, cableways or cablecars) were used to move materials in industry from the mid-nineteenth ...

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Claudio Boada Villalonga (1920–2006)

The engineer Claudio Boada Villalonga became one of the outstanding business leaders of the late-twentieth century in Spain, a technocrat ...

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