century industrial operations. Jan Verbruggen played an important role in transmitting technology from the state-owned concerns of the ancien regime to the entrepreneurs of the Industrial Revolution. His

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

Cromford to the inland waterways network, and was well-acquainted with intellectuals of the Industrial Revolution period, including Erasmus Darwin, James Watt and Samuel More. Part of the situation at that [...] Sir Richard Arkwright transformed the cotton industry throughout Europe. He was born at Preston, and after being apprenticed as a barber, moved to work for a peruke maker at to Bolton-le-Moors, where textile

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

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

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.

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

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

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

provide a detailed and moving account of the way of life of domestic textile workers during the Industrial Revolution. Bamford was born in Middleton 8 km north of Manchester, the son of a muslin weaver, a dissenter

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

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

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

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

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

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

of agricultural produce, and for other purposes, the prime purpose of the canals of the Industrial Revolution period throughout Europe was to carry coal.

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

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

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