rotated by water-power in horizontal machines, in which the cutters were advanced through gearing by hand wheels. In the early 1750s Verbruggen was appointed Master Founder at the state-owned foundry at The

the method of sowing seeds at suitable depth and in equally spaced rows instead of throwing them by hand over the soil. His seed-drill machine had several parallel plough blades with boxes and spouts to

was born into a farming family in Ayrshire, south-west Scotland. As a boy he was apprenticed to a hand-loom weaver at Kilbarchan, west of Glasgow. This introduced him to methods of bleaching and the limits [...] mainly by one of his partners, Charles Macintosh (1766-1843). The powder was far safer to make and handle than the previous chlorine, which was processed with sulphuric acid. With four partners, in 1799

The life of Margarete Steiff is an heroic story of triumph over handicaps. It is also a significant part of the industrial history of Europe, of the growing tendency in the closing years of the 19th century

printed designs. He bought fabric from weavers in Augsburg and had it printed in Hamburg and then hand-coloured in Augsburg. In 1759 he opened his own printing works but continued to put out the work of painting [...] and from a growing textile sector in Augsburg that benefitted from his skilled workforce. Schüle handed management to his sons in 1792 and then returned ten years later but the business closed in 1808

Ignaz Schustala (Czech: Ignác Šustala) began a small business making horse-drawn buggies and carriages in the mid-19th century at Kopřivnice (now in the eastern Czech Republic). His workshops expanded

one of the most important textile manufacturing cities in Europe. Łodz was a traditional area for hand-made textiles. From the 1820s mechanised mills for the woollen and flax industries were built, notably

Corbeil-Essonnes, he became interested in the potential for modernisation. He was frustrated by the hand-method of making paper, one sheet at a time, with numerous workers. In 1797 he devised a machine to make [...] with a stream of pulp and then passed through rollers to squeeze out the water. The paper was laid by hand across a series of bars to dry. Robert patented his machine in 1799 with Didot’s support. The French

(Brothers Nobel Oil Company). With expert engineers from Sweden, Ludwig and Robert made plans for the handling of oil from well to refinery, store and export. Their technologically advanced approach adopted

the works of Charles Darwin (1809-82) and Hermann Melville (1819-91). His first travel guide, A Handbook for Travellers to Holland, Belgium and the Rhine appeared in 1836 and was followed by guides to [...] they feature, which can be of great interest to historians of industry. The fifteenth edition of A Handbook for Travellers on the Continent being a guide to Holland, Belgium, Prussia, Northern Germany and

et vous aurez bonne table et bon gîte’. (‘Your journey will be enchanting. You will be led by the hand. Your yearning for the picturesque will be satisfied and you will have good cuisine and good lodging

Derwent. Their business became highly successful, producing far more silk threat than the English hand spinners. It employed around 300 people. John Lombe died only a year later. He may have been poisoned

spinning mill at Železný Brod and a worsted spinning mill at Raspenava that supplied woollen yarn to hand looms in the area. His company was one of the biggest textile businesses in Europe. Liebieg also

14 he was apprenticed to a ‘reed-maker’, who made the combs that separated the warp threads on handlooms. He left his apprenticeship within a month as he said he had already learned everything about the [...] loom by springs. It ran on a board between boxes at each end, controlled by a chord in the weaver’s hand. The invention doubled the speed of weaving. It also made it possible to weave broad cloth with one

cards recorded a particular pattern and they could be changed to make a different one. This made hand-weaving much faster and more accurate. In 1805 Napoleon declared Jacquard’s invention the property of

name Caspar Honegger Maschinenfabrik Rüti. His father, Salomon Honegger, worked as a spinner and handloom weaver but by 1816 opened his own a spinning mill at Rüti. Caspar showed technical ability and was

near Hattingen and acquired iron ore and coal mines. She continued working into her seventies and handed ownership of the company to her son Karl in 1912, three years before she died. The company later

He took issue with his contemporary railway engineers, considering that steam locomotives could handle steeper gradients that those on the lines built by Robert Stephenson (1803-59), and fiercely opposing

worker. Two years later he formed Götze & Hartmann, a mechanical engineering company in which he handled technological developments and his new partner the commercial aspects. In the same year he purchased

‘engine’ and its shorter form ‘gin’. Hargreaves could not read and write and worked as a domestic hand-loom weaver with his own spinning wheel and loom in his cottage. At this time, demand for thread was