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 manufacture [...] 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

Steam power was one of the critical innovations of the industrial revolution, allowing mechanical power to be concentrated wherever it was needed. The evolution of the technology relied on many inventors

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

Bauwens was an entrepreneur and industrial spy who spread new cotton manufacturing technologies from England to Belgium and France at a key point in the early Industrial Revolution. He was born in Ghent, where [...] a leading European centre of the cotton industry: it became known as ‘the Manchester of Belgium’. Bauwens had broken the British monopoly of the cotton industry. For achieving this while Britain was at [...] tannery on modern principles. While he was in England Bauwens also saw the great success of the cotton industry. At the age of 27 he opened his first cotton factory, which was at Passy near Paris. Very soon

younger brother of John Wilkinson (1728-1808) the most prominent ironmaster of the British Industrial Revolution. Both William and John Wilkinson grew up in Cumbria, where their father was employed at the [...] received ?8000 in compensation. William Wilkinson never became a commanding figure in the British iron industry, but his role in transmitting new technologies to France was of great importance.

John Hughes was a Welshman who gave his name to one of Europe’s largest heavy industrial complexes. He was born at Merthyr Tydfil where his father was an engineer at the Cyfarthfa ironworks. Initially [...] his sons, who, with most other Welsh workers, returned to the United Kingdom after the Bolshevik Revolution. The city that grew up around the works was named after Hughes ‘Yuzovka’, but later became ‘Stalino’

In 1784, Henry Cort invented one of the most important iron-making processes of the Industrial Revolution. This was a new method of transforming cast iron into the more versatile and valuable material

known for his work with steel, Bessemer was a professional inventor with 129 patents across many industries. He came from a Huguenot family of printers in the south-east of England. His father, Anthony Bessemer [...] went to France as a young man to work for the Paris mint but returned to England during the French Revolution and began a type-foundry. After elementary school, Bessemer educated himself in his father’s workshop [...] iron broke easily, he decided to investigate a better material. With little knowledge of the iron industry, he tried an original idea of blowing air through molten iron in an open crucible – his ‘converter’

In his youth James Walker worked with some of the outstanding civil engineers of the Industrial Revolution. In his adult years worked on many important projects in Britain and in Germany, and his contributions

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.

interest in Industrial Archaeology developed in the 1970s under the influence of the historian Maurice Daumas (1910-84). He began to advocate in use of field evidence in the study of industrial and economic [...] Conservation of the Industrial Heritage (TICCIH) at Lyon and Grenoble in 1981 which led to the setting up of a group responsible for establishing a national inventory of industrial heritage at the Ministry [...] Amongst his many publications, two of the most important are Industrial Heritage: a new territory (with Grace Dorel-Ferré, 1996) and Luxury Industries in France (1998)

Friedrich Engels wrote one of the classic critiques of the consequences of the Industrial Revolution in England, devoted much of his life to supporting and publicising the writings of Karl Marx, and was [...] house of 1775, is preserved as part of the city`s history centre, which also includes a museum of industrial archaeology. He was the son of a cotton manufacturer, and spent three years in the employment of

mills for the woollen and flax industries were built, notably by Wendisch in 1827 and Gayers in 1835. However, tariffs between Poland and Russia caused the industries to decline. When tariffs were removed [...] Karl (or Karol) Scheibler learned about the mechanised textile industries in several parts of Europe and took his knowledge to Łodz in Poland. The factory he built there in 1855 was one of the biggest [...] biggest in the world, covering 168 hectares. The population of Łodz as an industrial city grew from 18,000 in 1851 to 100,000 in 1878. It became one of the most important textile manufacturing cities in Europe

Robert Owen was one of the most influential figures of the Industrial Revolution, a successful and philanthropic factory owner, a pioneer of co-operation and a thinker who inspired socialist movements [...] forward his views through the New Moral World between 1834 and 1841. He visited France during the revolution of 1848, and from 1853 turned to spiritualism. His many followers met in numerous Owenite halls

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

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

Heredia was among the pioneers of the industrial revolution in southern Spain. He was an industrialist and entrepreneur who played a central role in the early industrial development of the region of Málaga [...] among the wealthiest businessmen in Spain. In the last years before his death in 1846, his other industrial interests included the San Andrés lead smelter at Adra, Almería, which he developed into a successful [...] Basque region. Nevertheless, his initiatives laid the foundation for Málaga’s transformation into an industrial region.

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

During the British Industrial Revolution Jedediah Strutt was among the fathers of the factory system. After making innovations in knitting stockings he worked with Richard Arkwright to build the first [...] first water-powered cotton-spinning factories. Industrial settlements associated with him are inscribed in the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage site. He grew up in Derbyshire in central England, where his