Curated playlist
People of the Industrial Revolution
- Thomas HighsThomas Highs died in 1803 and a stranger paid for his burial. He had accused Richard Arkwright of stealing a machine.
- Abraham Darby IIAbraham Darby II showed that coke pig iron could be turned into wrought iron.
- John LombeEngland wanted more spun silk than its spinners could make, so John Lombe went to Italy.
- James Beaumont NeilsonJames Beaumont Neilson, a gasworks foreman, cut furnace fuel use to a third with hot air.
- James HargreavesA knocked-over spinning wheel that kept spinning gave James Hargreaves the idea for the jenny.
- Lewis PaulLewis Paul died in 1759, and he is credited as the original inventor of roller spinning. That idea later became the basis of the water frame, the machine that spun cotton in a cotton mill. Yet his name is far less familiar than the man…
- John RoebuckJohn Roebuck agreed to pay James Watt's debts for a two-thirds share in an engine that still fell short.
- Abraham Darby IIIAbraham Darby III inherited his family's iron business at thirteen. He later built the first cast-iron bridge.
- Claude Louis BertholletClaude Louis Berthollet argued for decades against every other leading chemist, and was partly right.
- Joseph AspdinJoseph Aspdin's Portland cement patent describes a soft stucco mix. It was named for a Dorset quarry stone.
- John Kay (flying shuttle)John Kay was an English inventor whose weaving device moved so fast that one early description said the shuttle could only be seen "like a tiny cloud which disappears the same instant." That machine became a key contribution to the…
- Abraham Darby IIn January 1709, Abraham Darby lit a Coalbrookdale furnace and smelted iron with coke.
- Richard Roberts (engineer)Before Richard Roberts built his planer in 1817, fitters made flat metal surfaces by hand.
- Thomas SaveryThomas Savery, an English engineer, promised in a patent of 1698 that his machine would drain mines, supply towns with water and turn mills by "the impellent force of fire." It was a bold claim. His pump became the first steam-powered…
- Richard ArkwrightRichard Arkwright died without spending a single night in his castle. A fire destroyed it when it was nearly complete.
- Henry MaudslayA lock built by Henry Maudslay resisted every attempt to pick it for 47 years. It carried a 200 guinea reward.
- Marc Isambard BrunelWithin 15 weeks of its opening, one million people had walked through the Thames Tunnel, the first tunnel ever built under a river. Its builder was Sir Marc Isambard Brunel, a French-British engineer best known for the work he did in…
- Samuel CromptonSamuel Crompton gave his spinning mule to the world without a patent. Parliament later paid him £5,000 for it in 1812.
- Lord KelvinIn 1845, at the University of Cambridge, an examiner named Robert Leslie Ellis is said to have sized up a graduating student. He reportedly told a fellow examiner, "You and I are just about fit to mend his pens." The student was William…
- Matthew BoultonBy 1786, two-thirds of the coins in Britain were counterfeit. Matthew Boulton's steam-powered mint helped fix it.
- Robert StephensonRobert Stephenson twice turned down a knighthood. The railway engineer was offered it by Queen Victoria in 1849.
- William MurdochWilliam Murdoch walked over 300 miles to ask James Watt for a job. He brought a wooden hat he had turned himself.
- Charles BabbageCharles Babbage died on the 18th of October 1871 at 1 Dorset Street in Marylebone, London, where he had lived and worked for over forty years. He was 79. Among his papers were designs for engines of brass and iron that could calculate,…
- Antoine LavoisierAntoine Lavoisier, who named oxygen, was guillotined in Paris in 1794. He was also a tax collector.
- Josiah WedgwoodJosiah Wedgwood lost his right leg in 1768, then opened his Etruria pottery works the next year.
- Humphry DavyIn 1799, chemist Humphry Davy breathed sixteen quarts of laughing gas for nearly seven minutes.
- George StephensonGeorge Stephenson could not read or write until he was 18 years old. Victorians would call him the Father of Railways.
- Henry BessemerA sixteen-year-old confronted Henry Bessemer in London over her father's unpaid work.
- Thomas TelfordThomas Telford sealed the iron joints of his Pontcysyllte Aqueduct with boiling sugar and lead.
- Charles TennantCharles Tennant's first bleach patent, granted in 1798, was later declared invalid. He won a new one in 1799.
- Edmund CartwrightA mill meant for 500 power looms burned down with only 30 installed. Weavers working by hand were the likely arsonists.
- Henry CortHenry Cort reshaped British iron making, yet he died a ruined man in 1800. His royalty deal collapsed.
- John Loudon McAdamTarmac carries the name of a man who never invented it. John Loudon McAdam's stone roads came first, then tar.
- Joseph WhitworthSir Joseph Whitworth was an English engineer, entrepreneur, inventor and philanthropist. At the Great Exhibition of 1851, he demonstrated a measuring system precise to one millionth of an inch. That is about 25 nanometres, a distance no…
- Matthew MurrayMatthew Murray built the first commercially successful steam locomotive in 1812.
- Richard TrevithickCoworkers hired a night watchman to guard Richard Trevithick's grave. He built the first working railway locomotive.
- John SmeatonThe Wright brothers used a number from John Smeaton's 1759 water and wind paper. Wind tunnels later showed it was wrong.
- John Wilkinson (industrialist)John Wilkinson, an English ironmaster, had several coffins made of iron.
- Benjamin HuntsmanSheffield cutlers refused to buy Benjamin Huntsman's steel, so he sold it all to France.
- Ned LuddNed Ludd, the name behind machine-breaking workers, may never have existed. Rebels in 1812 signed their letters with it.
- Nicolas LeblancNicolas Leblanc was a French surgeon who found a way to turn ordinary table salt into soda ash. He was born on the 6th of December 1742 and died on the 16th of January 1806. Soda ash is the common name for sodium carbonate, and it was in…