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 [...] mechanical innovations remains a subject for debate, but there is no doubt that it was he who for the first time organised the production of cotton yarn on a factory basis, using a succession of carding and

Ernest Solvay’s innovations transformed the chemical industry throughout Europe, and were the starting point for a company involved in a wide range of industrial activities that is important in many countries [...] chloride. The sodium bicarbonate is precipitated, and heated to produce soda ash. Solvay set up his first commercial plant at Cuillet near Charleroi in 1863, the same year in which he founded Solvay et Cie

Nobel studied and gained experience of industry in France, Italy, Germany and the United States. He began to develop nitroglycerine in 1859-60, after it had first been prepared by Ascanio Sobrero (1812-88) [...] purified glycerine with a mixture of concentrated nitric and sulphuric acids. Nobel took out his first patent in 1863, but nitroglycerine proved unstable until in 1866 he combined it with kieselguhr to

prototype of all modern petrol engines in 1885, creating the first carburettor in the same year. Daimler attached an engine to a bicycle, producing the first motorcycle, in 1885, and the following year attached [...] Gottlieb Daimler was one of the outstanding pioneers of the motor industry. Born at Schorndorf, Wurtemburg, he studied at the Polytechnic in Stuttgart, before travelling to enlarge his understanding of [...] (1832-91). In this and other ventures he worked closely with Wilhelm Maybach (1846-1929), whom he first met when he was working in a charitable home, the Bruderhaus in Reutlingen, where Maybach was an inmate

Coalbrookdale, the ironmaster who, in the 1750s, established a pattern of management in the iron industry that was followed in other parts of Britain and in other European countries. Her diaries provide [...] was born Abiah Maude, daughter of a wealthy family of Quakers at Bishopswearmouth, Sunderland. Her first marriage, to John Sinclair, ended with the death of her husband in 1737. She met Abraham Darby in [...] remainder of her life to journeys as a Quaker minister. At Coalbrookdale she and her husband lived first at Dale House, which is now conserved, and from 1750 at a new, larger house in a park, called Sunniside

patronage of Queen Charlotte, and exported to America and the Caribbean. In 1770 he fulfilled the first of many orders for the Empress Catherine of Europe, and in 1771-2 sent a succession of parcels of [...] 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

cannon. De Wendel was responsible for the construction of the Fonderie Royale at Le Creusot, the first stage of which included four blast furnaces, and 24 km of iron railway. The last stages of the journey [...] 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.

whose writings about his early career are a valuable source of evidence on the state of British industry in the 1830s. He was born in Edinburgh, the son of Alexander Nasmyth (1758-1840), an artist, designer [...] of the ironworks at Coalbrookdale. In 1834 he set up a machine tool workshop in Manchester on the first floor of a tenemented former textile mill, where the beam of a steam engine that was being machined [...] . The steam hammer was patented in 1842, and a double-acting version was introduced in 1843. The first working steam hammer was made in Le Creusot by Frenchmen who had seen Nasmyth’s drawings while visiting

Ruskin Hall (now Ruskin College), Oxford, in 1900. While on military service in India during the First World War he learned Sanskrit. He was employed at the railway works, principally as a hammerman, between [...] between 1892 and 1914, when ill-health caused him to seek outdoor employment as a market gardener. His first significant publication, Songs of Wiltshire, appeared in 1902, and A Wiltshire Village, ten years [...] district in which I find myself’, but, unusually, he was also interested in describing large-scale industry. His Life in Railway Factory, published in 1915, provides a vivid record of a management regime

collecting and conserving films. In 1937, with Henri Langlois, he founded Cinematheque Francaise, the first dedicated film archive, where he worked until 1949, and in 1938 was amongst the founders of the Federation [...] the Saar. It was intended as a celebration of Guy Monnet’s plan for the modernisation of French industry as part of the European Coal and Steel Community, but Franju showed the steelworks as an ugly intrusion [...] made Hotel des Invalides, an ironic critique of France’s principal military museum. He directed his first feature, La Tete contre les Murs (The Keepers) in 1958, followed by the horror film Les Yeux sans

Carl Zeiss, 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 [...] Weimar, studied at the university of Jena, and in 1846 let up a workshop where he made lenses, at first for microscopes and then for cameras. He won a prize at the Thuringia Industrial Exhibition in 1861

Gösta Serlachius was one of the leading Finnish entrepreneurs of the first half of the 20th century, an important figure in politics and military affairs, and a connoisseur of the arts whose collections [...] a leading role in the establishment of national organisations representing the interests of the industry. He was active in the White Army during the Finnish Civil War of 1918, and was sent to Britain in

Sir Robert Hadfield was one of the most influential figures in the European steel industry in the twentieth century. He was born in Sheffield where, in 1872, his father established the Hecla steelworks [...] s. The company moved in 1897 to the East Hecla Works at Tinsley, and, after expansion during the First World War, employed 13,000 people and had a capital valuation of ?1.9 million by 1918. Hadfield was

A pioneer of the British electrical industry, Thomas Parker was described by Lord Kelvin as the "Edison of Europe". He was ahead of his time — a great inventor and entrepreneur. He worked on the development [...] as early as 1884 and before the decade was out, he was commuting to work in it — Wolverhampton's first motorist. He was always willing to develop technologies further. Improvements to the dynamo he designed

1846 in his first ‘red guide’, the Handbuch für Reisende durch Deutschland und den Oesterreichischen Kaiserstaat (Handbook for travellers through Germany and the Austrian Empire). His first guide to Switzerland [...] (1874-1959). The company moved in the mid-1870s from Koblenz to the centre of the German publishing industry in Leipzig. Perhaps no company did more to encourage the habit of travelling across Europe and gaining

company from 1908 when his brother died. The company prospered making military footwear during the First World War, and reached its zenith in the 1920s and 30s. On a further visit to America Bat’a saw Henry [...] and rubber technology, and was a leading figure in a period of success and prosperity for Czech industry. When Tomáš Bat’a died his company employed 31,000 people, a total which increased to 65,000 in

a timetable) was published monthly, growing from 8 pages when first published, to 32 pages in 1845 and 946 pages by 1898. Bradshaw’s first Continental Railway Guide was published in June 1847, and his [...] more than a century. He also produced publications that are of continuing value to historians of industry and transport. Bradshaw was born at Pendleton near Manchester and trained as an engraver and printer [...] information and his instinct for what might interest them marked him out from his competitors. His first Railway Time Table and Assistant to Railway Travelling appeared on 19 October 1839, and from 1841

The career of Coco Chanel exemplifies the power of brands in twentieth-century industry and the extension of the market for luxury goods from limited circles of rich people to a much wider public. She [...] was involved with the English polo player Arthur Edward ‘Boy’ Capel (1881-1919) who financed her first shops, at Deauville in 1913 and opposite the casino at Biarritz in 1915. She was subsequently mistress [...] accommodation for the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) and gave financial guarantees for the first production of his Sacré de Printemps (Rite of Spring). She circulated in high society and in 1922

companies suffered severe losses in the years after the First World War, and he did not live to see the subsequent prosperity of Czech industry. [...] well as in finance. His father was the geologist Johann Baptist Čžjžek (1806-55), who compiled the first geological map of Bohemia. He studied chemistry at Horni Slavkov (Schlaggerwald) in western Bohemia [...] Tatra motor vehicle firm, but was chiefly notable for building what is generally recognised as the first multiple unit passenger train (Triebwagenzug) to run on a European railway. Čžjžek was involved in

Richard Hartmann was one of the leading figures in the engineering industry that flourished in Saxony from the mid-nineteenth century. He was not a native of Saxony having been born at Barr in Alsace, [...] following year and 350 by 1844, and moved several times to successively larger premises. Hartmann’s first steam locomotive was completed in 1848. He built locomotives that were the equal of those imported