Iron foundries and engineering works were essential to equip new industries in the industrial revolution. In Denmark, Søren Frich was an engineer who created an important iron foundry and engineering works

engineer of railway routes and a mechanical engineer of rails and locomotives during the industrial revolution, he transformed transport. Stephenson was self-taught as an engineer. He was born at Wylam [...] of the nineteenth century, exporting engines around the world. Railways evolved during the industrial revolution from precursors in the Middle Ages. However, Stephenson’s Liverpool and Manchester Railway

British canal engineer in the early part of the Industrial Revolution. He was responsible for a network of waterways that became the arteries of Britain’s industrial regions and linked its principal navigable [...] began the great age of canals as the arteries to transport the fuel, raw materials and products of industrial Britain. This was the 66-km Bridgewater Canal, completed in 1761, which carried coal to Manchester

started a revolution in the mechanisation of textile weaving. While his own machines were ineffective, other inventors developed his patent with important results for the textile industry worldwide. [...] 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

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

The brilliant inventor John Kay was one of the most significant figures of the early Industrial Revolution. His invention of the flying shuttle for weaving stimulated successive inventions in the mechanisation [...] invention was taken up in the woollen industry and from the 1750s for weaving cotton. It was used across England by the 1790s and a century later in the vast textile industries of Japan, India and China. In 1747

Murdoch (or Murdock) was one of the most brilliant and prolific inventors of the British Industrial Revolution. Among his many innovations were improvements to Boulton and Watt steam engines and the i [...] reliable rotative motion from their reciprocating beam engines – a key development of the Industrial Revolution - Murdoch devised the Sun and Planet Gear, patented in Watt’s name. In 1782 he invented an

powerful family business at Maastricht producing ceramics and glassware. He diversified into other industries and led the industrialisation of the city. His family for several generations before him were merchants [...] and send out his products. In 1830 a Dutch ban on importing Belgian goods following the Belgian Revolution led Regout to begin manufacturing glass himself. He attracted skilled workers from Belgium and

appointed an engineer to work with Robert on improvements but progress disrupted by the French Revolution. Didot bought the patent and prototype from Robert and in 1801 Didot’s English brother-in-law John [...] 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.

generation, remembered for his contributions to electrical power – the basis for the second industrial revolution. Among his multiple discoveries and inventions were the rotating magnetic field, multiphase [...] quickly dominated the new market for flexible and convenient electric motors for industrial use. This began a revolution in mechanical power, in which designs were continuously improved and developed in

during the Industrial Revolution by taking their skills and knowledge to another country. He worked in the cotton industry in Britain and then helped to establish mechanised textile industries in two regions [...] rs. At this time, Britain banned the export of machinery from the country’s innovative textile industries and the emigration of skilled workers, but entrepreneurs in Europe and America were keen to compete [...] Hamburg by an entrepreneur and agent for the Habsburg crown, Karl Glave-Kobielski, who was also an industrial spy in England. As a result, Thornton built the first water-powered cotton factories in Austria

glassworks. Cobalt blue was exported widely, especially to Britain’s porcelain, glass, paint and paper industries. Wegner bought the company on behalf of an investment group and was made Director-General and co-owner [...] world’s cobalt pigment. The business was highly profitable but the economic crisis following the revolutions of 1848 and the invention of synthetic ultramarine led to bankruptcy in 1849. (The cobalt works

leading millwright and one of the most prolific British engineers of docks and waterways in the Industrial Revolution. As either designer or consulting engineer he reported on over 200 projects. Rennie grew up [...] Mint and devised machinery for flour mills, textile factories, breweries and other steam-powered industries. In 1810 he built a new factory at Southwark, London, for his mechanical projects. He began supplying

British Industrial Revolution, particularly in the manufacture of sulphuric acid, iron production and the invention of the steam engine. He helped to establish central Scotland as a heavy industrial region [...] confidently applied new methods on a large scale. It was fuelled by coal when almost all of the iron industry still relied on charcoal and it was unique in being built with multiple blast furnaces from the [...] works at Kinneil, about 10 km east of Carron, though he could raise enough capital to develop the industries as intended. At the same time, he went into partnership with the young inventor James Watt and

The ability to bleach products was increasingly important during the Industrial Revolution as industries such as cotton manufacturing and papermaking grew rapidly. In traditional bleaching, materials were [...] Charles Tennant, made it far easier to transport and use. It became a pillar of the new chemical industries. Charles Tennant was born into a farming family in Ayrshire, south-west Scotland. As a boy he was

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

Although Marc Brunel grew up in Normandy and served in the French navy, he fled France after the Revolution. He went first to the United States, where he became chief engineer to New York city aged 27. He [...] went on to design several sawmills and develop machines for the textiles, printing and boot-making industries among others. Nevertheless, he was imprisoned for debts and was released only after political