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

technological and economic changes in 18th century Britain that have been described as the Industrial Revolution. He was born in Greenock, the son of James Watt (1698-1782), a prosperous merchant and prominent [...] making the Boulton & Watt Collection in Birmingham one of the most important archives of the Industrial Revolution. Watt retained throughout his life interests in geology, mineralogy and chemistry, and was

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

John Cockerill was the archetype of those British engineers who took the technologies of the Industrial Revolution to continental Europe and developed successful and long-lived manufacturing enterprises. He

existing society is the history of class struggles’ have shaped the vocabulary of many accounts of industrial development, even those written by writers with philosophies directly opposed to Marxism. Karl [...] particularly through the First International, formed in 1864. His analysis of economic history, that industrial capitalism had created a proletariat, whose members could only live by selling their labour, has [...] historians would still regarded it as stimulating, but his vision of a future in which communist revolution would be followed by the withering away of the state has materialised neither in those states that

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

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

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

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

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

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