UNIV. OF THE RISE OF THE GREAT MANUFACTURERS IN ENGLAND, 1760-1790 CHAPTER I THE ERA OF INVENTION Previous to the rise of the great manufacturers incident to the transition to mechanical production, the productive resources of England were mainly in the hands of the landlords and merchant princes. The basis of the former class was the control of natural resources; the basis of the latter was an elaborate and monopolistic commercial system. The great manufacturers, who rose rapidly to a sense of unity and a position of power during the first half of the reign of George III, were possessed of neither commercial monopoly nor a monopoly of natural resources. Their origin was in the transition to mechanical production; their economic basis was in the superior productive and competi tive power of the new machines. The rise of the new manufacturers was accompanied by an extreme individualism as well as by great power. Their power grew out of the use of machines, but their individualism was independent of the transition to mechanical methods. For that transition was not an individualistic but a social creation, the result of widely diffused interests and organized activities on the part of the people of the time. The names most commonly associated with the devising of new methods of production are Hargreaves, Arkwright, Crompton, Cartwright and Watt. But while these men were working out the problems of their textile and power inventions, literally thousands of other men CYTHOBM working with perhaps equal ardor to solve the same or similar problems of mechanical improvement; national and local societies were organized to stimulate and reward inventive activity; and the government paid large sums in recognition of the work of inventors and passed numerous laws for the protection of inventions. The period of the textile inventions was a period characterized by what may be termed a prevailing spirit of invention. Interest in mechanical improvement found expression in many ways. One of its manifestations was an increase in the number of patents for inventions. The number of patents issued during the fifteen years from 1760 to 1775 was approximately the same as the number issued during the preceding sixty years. The number issued during the quarter of a century from 1760 to 1785 equaled the number issued during the preceding century and a half. During no decade preceding 1760, with the one exception of the years 1690-1699, did the number of patents rise to 100, and the number during that decade was only 102. In the decade beginning in 1760, the number of patents granted was 205, and each succeeding decade was marked by a very rapid increase. 2 The mechanical interests of the time found expression not 'Compiled from Woodcroft, Titles of Patents of Invention, Vol. 1. The exact figures follow: Number of patents 1700-1760, 379; Number of patents 1617-1760, 743; Number of patents 1760-1775, 370; Number of patents 1760-1785, 776. Compiled from Woodcroft, Titles of Patents of Invention, Vol. I. Following are the numbers of patents issued during the decades since the Restoration: Later decades also witnessed rapid increases in patent grants. only in the increasing number of patents, but also in greater variety in the nature of the inventions. According to Bennett Woodcroft's classification of inventions for use in official publications, there were 396 kinds of inventions patented during the years 1700 to 1785, and of these groups, 168 were added during the years 1760 to 1785. 3 The greater inventive activity of the late eighteenth century is evident not only from a comparison of the number and the variety of the patents, but also from a comparison of the nature of the inventions represented by the patent grants. The early patents were in many cases issued not for definite, tangible inventions, but for ideas and suggestions, and for vague, undefined devices and processes in some instances not far removed from the occult arts of the middle ages. During the period of increased inventive activity, as well as before, patents were issued for worthless inventions. But the more definite, workable nature of the patents issued during the later period, in comparison with the tendency toward vagueness, extravagance and speculation in the earlier patents, affords a sharp contrast. This contrast is to be explained in part by the general increase in mechanical and scientific knowledge; and in part by the more rigorous enforcement of the rules for submission of definite specifications, drawings and models in order to secure patents. 5 The increase in the number and the variety of patents issued and the more explicit nature of the inventions indicate clearly a rapid growth of interest in mechanical improvement. So ap 'Compiled from Woodcroft, Subject-matter Index of Patents of Invention, Vol. 1. 'For a few instances of such patents, see Woodcroft, Titles of Patents of Invention, Vol. 1, p. 2, patent granted to Ramsey and Wildgosse; p. 28, to Worcester; p. 44, to Becher; p. 51, to Ayscoghe; p. 52, to Smartfoot; p. 54, to Porter and White; p. 57, to Williams and Marwood; p. 63, to Winball; p. 69, to Aldersey; p. 92, to Payne. Concerning patent law and practice, see below, pp. 8, 9. parent to the people of the time was this tendency that it called. forth in 1776 a book of verse entitled The Patent. " 6 The following passage is a facetious but none the less significant expression of the inventive spirit evidenced by the patent records: "Hail to the patent! which enables man To vend a folio or a warming pan. This makes the windlass work with double force, Oft known to cure, but oft'ner known to kill. The time may come when nothing will succeed The door of nature with a patent key." The increased number, variety, and definiteness of patents are by no means the only ways in which the prevailing spirit of invention found expression. The securing of a patent was an expensive proceeding, and was merely the initial step in the protection of the rights of the inventor. Because of this fact, and of the further fact that other methods of rewarding inventors were devised, there was an immense inventive activity unrecorded in the patent office. One of the chief purposes of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, as well as of various local societies, was to promote mechanical improvement by offering premiums as a substitute for patent rights. Extensive inventive activity by men either careless of their rights under the patent laws, or unable to assert their claims, will become apparent in the discussion of the work of Reviewed in the London Magazine, 1776, p. 383. these societies. It will suffice at this point to state by way of illustration that Hargreaves did not patent his spinning jenny till several years after its invention; that Crompton's "mule" was never patented; and that before the time of Hargreaves' jenny, premiums were paid for four different machines, none of which were patented, for spinning more than one thread at a time. The question of the best method of rewarding inventors, as well as other aspects of popular interest in mechanical progress, found frequent expression in the various types of current literature. A survey of accounts of this kind reveals innumerable devices, many of them unpatented, and some of them highly successful. These accounts are significant because they show not only an extensive inventive activity but also a widespread public interest in the subject. The briefest analysis or enumeration of popular contemporaneous records having to do with inventions would carry the discussion afield. It is necessary, therefore, to mention only a few characteristic instances. The Annual Register had a department regularly devoted to "Useful Projects." In 1764 a new periodical, The Wonderful Magazine, devoted to the recording of "things out of the common road," was advertised. The Museum Rusticum et Commerciale, begun in 1764, unofficially patronized by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, and devoted to the recording of new and valuable discoveries, was of such interest, according to the editors, that "there was scarcely a newspaper or magazine in the kingdom" that had not reprinted portions of its contents. A book entitled The Patent has already been mentioned. Among the numerous references to inventions and inventors in the literary journals of the time, there is one of special significance because of the light it throws on the mechanical interests of the 7 'In Lloyd's Evening Post and British Chronicle, Vol. 15, p. 320. |