was appointed chief engineer at an engineering work at Pilsen established in 1859 by Ernst Fürst von Waldstein-Wartenburg, which then had about 100 workers. He bought the factory in 1869 after which it [...] foundry. The Skoda company was incorporated in 1899 shortly before the death of its founder. The works made locomotives, machine tools and turbines, as well as large forgings for distant shipbuilders, [...] machines guns and mountain artillery for the army, and heavy guns for the navy. The capacity of the works was greatly increased during the First World War after which it was purchased by Schneider et Cie

and the manufacture of textile machinery. In 1841 he took a job at the Hauboldsche textile machine works and within three years was a manager. In 1844 he took a new role at the Tauscher and Company cylinder [...] owner. At this time, local engineering companies imported the machine tools they needed for their work at great expense from Britain. Zimmerman decided, at the age of 28, to enter this field himself. He [...] modern principles with a long workshop hall served by a travelling crane. He continued to expand the works with a foundry and a shop for making woodworking machinery. Zimmerman built himself a remarkable Gothic

eastern Bulgaria when it was within the Ottoman Empire. After attending the local Greek school he began work as a weaver of woollen cloth. He showed an interest in improving techniques and devised a better method

was split up. Zeiss Ikon resumed production in the Federal Republic at the former Contessa camera works in Stuttgart. The glassmaking business was relocated to Mainz as Schott Glaswerke AG, but also continued [...] in the GDR as Jena Glaswerke AG. The two were merged after reunification. The professional camera works was likewise split between a factory that remained at Jena, Carl Zeiss GmbH, and a new one established

on a variety of topics, with open discussion. A new format is 'My day at work', where ERIH site staff present their day-to-day work and raise interest in industrial heritage as a potential career option

He soon offered York the chance to build and manage another French foundry. In 1853, York began to work independently as an agent in construction. He built a railway in France and provided gas lighting

Migration in search of work has always been part of the pattern of industrialisation. In the years after the Second World War many Europeans, particularly from the eastern parts of the continent, found

The Völklinger Hütte (ironworks) in Germany’s Saarland, which was shut down in 1986, can be justifiably described as an industrial dinosaur. It extends over an area of 600,000 square metres and exempl

was now available. However, far too many people sought work in the burgeoning industrial cities, as mechanisation put millions of artisans out of work, and many farmers sought new employment as their farms [...] many people looking for work, factory owners could afford to pay poverty wages. Working hours ranged from 12 to 16 hours, 6 days a week. Violations of the strict time and work discipline resulted in immediate [...] wage deductions, if not dismissal. A skilled worker, perhaps operating a mechanical loom, might earn enough to live on, but usually the whole family had to work: Women for half the wage, children for even

began to work on a contract at Brynlliw Colliery at Grovesend near Gorseinon. He lodged with an elderly widow of a miner who filled a tin bath with water prior to his return from his first day’s work, and [...] his home subsequently became part of Poland. The family settled in Neumunster near Hamburg, where work was scarce, and at the age of 18 he began to train as a coal miner and worked for three years at the [...] He married a Welsh woman in 1963 and settled at Llangennech, where, unlike some of his German co-workers, he became involved in the local community. Nevertheless he was amongst those who enthusiastically

Williams was a poet and writer, whose account of more than 20 years employment at the locomotive works of the Great Western Railway at Swindon is one of the most vivid and eloquent records, written from [...] born at South Marston, a parish adjacent to Swindon, where many employees at the railway company’s works had settled. His father was a woodworker from Conwy, North Wales, but his mother was locally-born [...] military service in India during the First World War he learned Sanskrit. He was employed at the railway works, principally as a hammerman, between 1892 and 1914, when ill-health caused him to seek outdoor employment

Staffordshire. After disputes with their father, the two brothers became partners in the Bersham works in 1774, while William had a 1/8 share in John’s ironworks at Snedshill, Shropshire. William left [...] a large ironworks at Indret near the mouth of the Loire were executed by Pierre Toufaire, but the works was unsuccessful and produced few cannon. Ignace de Wendel, an artilleryman, and a member of a family

was born in Bolton in northern England and studied at the Manchester Mechanics Institute. His first work took him across Europe with the engineering company of Philip Taylor and sons – to a shipyard at Toulon

built in 1630. An incredible house to visit –contrast it with the Elsecar Heritage Centre and the workers houses around it, and learn what happened when coal was dug underneath the building and from the

branches to connect the new works to the company’s coal mines and coke works at Stiring and at Seraing, across the Belgian border. Nearby he founded Stiring-Wendel, a model workers’ settlement, begun in 1846 [...] 1846. He provided schools, a church, shops and housing and the workers and their families benefitted from health insurance and pensions. oon after de Wendel died, much of Lorraine was absorbed by Prussia

for many decades. By around 1898 the factorry employed 1,600 people. In 1911, he founded a steel works at Csepel with the name Manfred Weiss, Munitions-, Stahl- und Metallwerke, which not only supplied [...] canned meat and coffee. With the end of the war, the factory contracted from 30,000 to only 400 workers. It was confiscated by the new Soviet Republic and Weiss attempted suicide. However, he returned [...] kitchen and built a hospital, maternity home, sanatorium for tuberculosis patients and nursery for his workers’ children.

where he could import copper and export his products easily. By 1898 the factory employed 2,000 workers. In 1901 the company was enlarged as the Tréfileries et Laminoirs du Havre (TLH) but a crash in the

Wilhelm Christian Benecke to evaluate the Norwegian company Modums Blaafarveværket – the ‘blue colour works’ – which was for sale. Established by King Christian VII in 1776, this was among the world’s largest [...] largest producers of cobalt blue pigment. It consisted of cobalt mines, calcining kilns, a works to process the dyestuffs and a glassworks. Cobalt blue was exported widely, especially to Britain’s porcelain [...] revolutions of 1848 and the invention of synthetic ultramarine led to bankruptcy in 1849. (The cobalt works and mines operated until 1893 and became a museum in 1971.) In 1835 Benecke and Wegner had purchased

It was probably the largest and was certainly the most logically-designed pottery works of the period, in which workers undertook only limited tasks in the production of complex ceramic wares. Wedgwood [...] French, Dutch and German. His awareness of the importance of design and his ability to attract and work with designers, his innovations in the organisation of production, and his flair for marketing were

engineer by the name of Cornelius Vermuyden from Zeeland to carry out diking and land reclamation work. Vermuyden was so successful, above all in the low-lying marshlands of East Anglia that, at the end