Mannheim in the state of Baden and at the age of 13 was apprenticed to a goldsmith. When he was in his mid-20s he opened his own goldsmith’s shop in Mannheim. In 1848 he saw opportunities in the development [...] a programme of street lighting. The by-products of coal-gas were being explored by chemists in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1856, William Perkin in Britain had discovered the potential to make synthetic

Leo Baekeland was a Belgian chemist whose researches did much to shape the material culture of the mid-20th century. He read chemistry at the University of Ghent, and continued his studies in Great Britain [...] plugs, jewellery, cameras, ash trays, fountain pens and many other characteristic artefacts of the mid-20th century. Baekeland established the General Bakelite Co in the United States in 1909, and sold

the railways did not serve. He continued to prosper and enjoyed an annual income of £35,000 in the mid-1860s.

a window dresser at La Rinascente (‘the re-birth’) in Milan, a prestigious shop established in the mid-nineteenth century by Bocconi Bros, next to the Piazza del Duomo, which had been celebrated by the [...] a window dresser at La Rinascente (‘the re-birth’) in Milan, a prestigious shop established in the mid-nineteenth century by Bocconi Bros, next to the Piazza del Duomo, which had been celebrated by the

mine at Falun in 1693 that attracted the attention of mining engineers from all over Europe. In the mid-1690s he studied in Germany, the Netherland, France and England, and in 1697, after his return, established

Manuel Pinto de Azevedo became one of the leading industrialists and entrepreneurs of Portugal in the mid-twentieth century. He worked his way up from a position as a factory employee to build a group of cotton

by origin a maker of lenses, was one of the leaders of the photographic industry in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, and in the twentieth century the successors to the company he founded provided

Born and educated in Denmark, Knud Graah developed cotton mills in the Norwegian capital in the mid-nineteenth century and ran them and other businesses for six decades. Knud Graah’s older brother David

glassmaking and the production of furniture and linen cloth had origins that extend from long before the mid-19th century. As a museologist Hazelius has had a powerful influence on the presentation of the industrial

European, American and Japanese inventors attempted to transmit still images or moving pictures from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. John Logie Baird, in the 1920s, was the first to produce a practical product

notably for armour plating, and by 1850 was the owner of a foundry in Newport, Monmouthshire. In the mid-1850s he moved to London, then an important centre for shipbuilding. He became involved with the Millwall

Benjamin Wegner was a timber merchant and a major producer of cobalt blue pigment in Norway around the mid-nineteenth century. He was born in the Prussian city of Königsberg on the Baltic (now Kaliningrad been

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 one end of the

industry in the early twentieth century. He remained on the boards of Elkem and Nork Hydro until the mid-1920s. He was also briefly a member of the Norwegian parliament. A statue of him was put up at Rjukan

artillery pieces, and, in various forms, was widely used in every war of the 20th century. From the mid-1860s Nobel began to create a multinational company, with factories at Krummel near Hamburg in Germany

an enquiring mind and carried out research in such subjects as gas lighting and fertilisers. In the mid-1860s he began to produce ‘farine lactee’, a baby food that combined milk with wheat flour from which

Wahren was a Swedish businessman who developed the new industrial community of Forssa in Finland in the mid-19th century, one of the country’s earliest industrial towns. He was born into a family of merchants

co-operation and a thinker who inspired socialist movements in many countries. He was born in Newtown in mid-Wales, and apprenticed to James McGuffog, a draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire, before spending time

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 into a factory

manufacturer of biscuits who began his business in 1831 at Carlisle in north-west England. By the mid-nineteenth century he owned one of the largest bakery companies in Britain. Carr’s biscuits were known