Solvay’s innovations transformed the chemical industry throughout Europe, and were the starting point for a company involved in a wide range of industrial activities that is important in many countries

museum’s inspiring genius, and an influential advocate over many years for the conservation of the industrial heritage of North-East England. He was born at Mapplewell, a coal-mining community in Yorkshire [...] to investigate ways of study and preserving artefacts and buildings relating to the social and industrial history of the region. A site became available at Beamish Hall in Co Durham, and Frank Atkinson

Göransson was one of Europe’s first industrialists who had a truly international perspective on industry, technology and business. Born at Gävle in Sweden, as a young man he spent 18 months observing business [...] became the predominant material used in construction. The invention transformed the iron and steel industries world-wide. Göransson was the first manufacturer to demonstrate the successful application of the

The name Boulton & Watt is among the most famous of the industrial revolution. The company was a partnership between the inventor and steam-engine designer James Watt and the businessman and inventor Matthew [...] the world in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and revolutionised the application of power in industry. Boulton was born at Birmingham in the English midlands, where his father owned a business making [...] government in 1797 and supplied equipment for the Royal Mint. Boulton’s businesses became a model of industrial efficiency, quality control and systematic production. In the 1770s, he introduced a pioneering

Tomás de Zubiría e Ybarra (later Count Zubiría) was one of the leading industrial entrepreneurs in Spain in the early twentieth century and president of the country’s largest company, the steel conglomerate [...] other steel companies, La Vizcaya and La Iberia. Together, they occupied a huge proportion of the industrial land along the estuary of Bilbao and employed around 6,000 people. Zubiría remained president of

Victor Francisco Chávarri Salazar was an industrialist and businessman who contributed to the industrial development of Vizcaya (the Basque region). He came from a family of iron-ore merchants at Portugalete [...] was Natalia Salazar Mac Mahón. Victor studied civil engineering at Liége in Belgium and researched industry in Germany. His brother Benigno also studied engineering in Liége and they would later work closely

ropeways (sometimes called aerial tramways, cableways or cablecars) were used to move materials in industry from the mid-nineteenth century. Gondolas were suspended from ropes between pylons and pulled from [...] transport – the first cablecar for tourists was built by the Bleichert company in Austria in 1913. Industrial use of ropeways has virtually ended but passenger cablecars are still common, especially in mountain

producing high-quality ceramic wares, and, in a broader sense, to the intellectual background to the Industrial Revolution in Britain. He was born in Burslem, North Staffordshire, in a region where pottery [...] production, and his flair for marketing were his contributions to the development of the ceramics industry. He was active in the promotion of turnpike roads, and of canals, particularly prominent of the

machines were ineffective, other inventors developed his patent with important results for the textile industry worldwide. Cartwright was born in the east midlands of England, near Nottingham. He studied at Oxford [...] was awarded a grant of £10,000 by the British government in recognition of his achievements for industry. He retired to a farm in south-east England where he died aged 80. Although he proved that weaving

Smidaich was one of the leading entrepreneurs in the Habsburg Empire with interests in several major industries as well as in finance. His father was the geologist Johann Baptist Čžjžek (1806-55), who compiled [...] the years after the First World War, and he did not live to see the subsequent prosperity of Czech industry.

Armand Peugeot was one of the founders of the French motor car manufacturing industry. He was born at Herimoncourt in eastern France to a Protestant family who had long been involved in metal-working. [...] 1929, and, after various takeover, the company’s name is still prominent within the European car industry.

at the village of Barreiro, across the Tagus estuary from Lisbon, which would become the largest industrial complex in Portugal. Da Silva built the facilities to create a town and developed social provision [...] families - a school, medical assistance and a social security system. In 1911 he entered the shipping industry, buying eight ships to transport his goods. He founded the cigarette manufacturer Tabaqueira in

and steelworks in the Donbas basin in the late 19th century, making it one of the most important industrial regions in Europe. He was born in Sumy, Ukraine, where his family were grocery merchants. After [...] assets and companies were seized by the Russian authorities. At the request of his workers, the industrial city of Alchevsk was named in his honour.

helped transform the region around the northern Bohemian town of Liberec into one of the major industrial centres of the Austrian Empire. Liebieg was born in 1802 at Broumov in Bohemia. The town is now [...] company was one of the biggest textile businesses in Europe. Liebieg also diversified into other industries. He bought an abandoned glassworks in Bihar (now Romania) in 1852 and took expert glassworkers

in Vienna then at the age of 18 returned to Kraków to manage the family business. He sought new industrial opportunities and in 1823 he opened a coal mine and a factory for smelting zinc ore at Jaworzno [...] a courier service around Poland. He travelled to England, France and the German states to study industrial organisation and innovation. He was a joint promoter of the Warsaw to Vienna railway project begun

Franju was a French film director who made two documentaries that are of importance to students of industrial history. He had an individualistic style that fits into no particular school of film-making. Born [...] the Saar. It was intended as a celebration of Guy Monnet’s plan for the modernisation of French industry as part of the European Coal and Steel Community, but Franju showed the steelworks as an ugly intrusion

Carl Auer von Welsbach, also known as Carl Auer, was a distinguished industrial chemist. He was born in Vienna where he father was director of the imperial printing office, and, after military service

lly as the ‘Fourdrinier’. It was used widely, bringing about the industrialisation of the paper industry. Productivity increased dramatically and paper could be made to almost any practical size, including [...] first Fourdrinier machine was installed in France in 1811, Nicholas-Louis Robert left the paper industry. He instead established a small elementary school and worked as a teacher.

was a pioneer of the industrial revolution in Silesia - then in Prussia but today part of Poland. He developed mining for coal and zinc in the region and built the largest industrial empire of the period

rhw machine tools that made possible the widespread percolation of engineering skills during the Industrial Revolution, and guided the education of many of the leading British engineers of the mid-19th century [...] his great-grandson, Reginald Walter Maudslay (1871-1934), one of the pioneers of the British motor industry, established the Standard Motor Co at Coventry in 1903.