Curated category
English inventors
- Daniel BournDaniel Bourn secured a patent in 1748 for a carding machine with rotating cylinders, placing him at the edge of one of the most consequential industrial…
- James HargreavesJames Hargreaves was an illiterate hand loom weaver from Stanhill, Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire, and yet his name is attached to one of the most consequential…
- Lewis PaulLewis Paul died in 1759, but his story began much earlier with a family steeped in medicine and faith. His father served as the physician to Lord…
- Robert Kay (inventor)Robert Kay was born in 1728. Everything that made him worth remembering happened inside a machine most people rarely look at closely, the weaving loom.
- John RoebuckJohn Roebuck of Kinneil died in Edinburgh on the 17th of July 1794, but he left behind a world his own hands had helped build.
- Isaac NewtonSir Isaac Newton said his mother told him he was so small at birth that he could have fit inside a quart mug. He was born prematurely on Christmas Day, the…
- John Kay (flying shuttle)John Kay entered the world on the 17th of June 1704 in the Lancashire hamlet of Walmersley. His father Robert owned the Park estate there before dying before…
- Richard Roberts (engineer)Richard Roberts was born on the 22nd of April 1789 at Llanymynech, Powys. This village sat directly on the border between England and Wales.
- Henry MaudslayHenry Maudslay was born on the 22nd of August 1771, the fifth of seven children, in a family that lived in a narrow alley off Beresford Square in Woolwich.
- Samuel CromptonSamuel Crompton was born at 10 Firwood Fold in Bolton, Lancashire on the 3rd of December 1753. His father George worked as a caretaker at Hall i' th' Wood…
- Henry FourdrinierHenry Fourdrinier was born on the 11th of February 1766, into a family that already knew the texture of paper intimately.
- Robert HookeRobert Hooke died in London on the 3rd of March 1703, alone in his room at Gresham College, blind and bedridden. When his belongings were searched, a chest…
- Alan TuringAlan Turing once chained his tea mug to a radiator pipe at Bletchley Park so it could not be stolen. In the first week of every June he cycled to the office…
- Josiah WedgwoodJosiah Wedgwood was baptised on the 12th of July 1730, the thirteenth and last child of a Staffordshire potting family, in a village where every pot-works…
- Joseph BramahJoseph Bramah was born on the 13th of April 1748, the second son of a farmer in South Yorkshire, and he died on the 9th of December 1814 at a forest in…
- Edmund CartwrightEdmund Cartwright is the name behind a machine that a Manchester mill owner never got to finish installing. In 1790, Robert Grimshaw built a weaving factory…
- Joseph WhitworthJohn Street in Stockport, Cheshire, marked the birthplace of Joseph Whitworth on the 21st of December 1803. The site now holds a blue plaque on the back wall…
- Matthew MurrayMatthew Murray was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1765, and he left school at fourteen with no particular distinction to his name.
- Edmond HalleyEdmond Halley is remembered for a comet he never saw. He predicted its return in 1758, sixteen years after his death at the age of 85, and the comet was…
- John Wilkinson (industrialist)John Wilkinson was born in 1728 in the small settlement of Little Clifton, Bridgefoot, Cumberland, the son of an iron founder who stoked his blast furnace…
- Clement ClerkeSir Clement Clerke died in 1693, leaving behind a legacy of industrial innovation despite his personal financial ruin. He was the third son of George Clerke…