FT: Steaming Ahead

Rosen’s recurring motif is Stephenson’s Rocket. Rather than the traditional view that the Rocket symbolises the beginnings of steam locomotion, Rosen sees it as the culmination of experiments that began nearly 2,000 years before, when Heron of Alexandria demonstrated a crude steam turbine. He writes: “The puzzle of the Rocket is why it was built to run from Manchester to Liverpool, and not from Paris to Toulouse, or Mumbai to Benares, or Beijing to Hangzhou.”

The explanations cover a lot of the familiar ground: waterlogged mines needing more efficient drainage, the questioning nature of Protestantism, and British patent laws that added, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “the fuel of interest to the fire of genius”.

Rosen, an American, argues that the anglophone world was the first to succeed industrially because it “democratised the nature of invention” by breaking down scientific elites and letting craftsmen in on their secrets. A new breed of man arose – the artisan-engineer-entrepreneurs such as James Watt and George Stephenson. The Victorian hagiographies of Samuel Smiles turned them into heroes, a status that later became academically unfashionable. Here Rosen restores their work to a place of honour.

==

The Most Powerful Idea in the World

Review by Ian Jack

Published: June 5 2010 01:18 | Last updated: June 5 2010 01:18

The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry and Invention, by William Rosen, Jonathan Cape RRP£20, 400 pages

It was a collection of essays by the economic historian Arnold Toynbee, published posthumously in 1884, that first popularised “industrial revolution” as the name for the transformation that swept across Britain in the previous century.

There may be some problems with the term: the country hardly adopted the steam engine – which William Rosen rightly calls the period’s “signature gadget” – like a crowd storming into an Ikea sale. Thomas Newcomen may have put the first practical steam engine to work in 1712 to pump water from coal mines – but 90 years later water mills still produced more than three times as much power in Britain as steam.

Nonetheless, nobody can doubt the consequences of that most pivotal century. As Rosen writes, human productivity had changed very little in the 7,000 years since the earlier, agrarian revolution. Food consumption, life expectancy and distances travelled were all much the same for the average Englishman in Shakespeare’s time as they had been for the average Babylonian shepherd; his was a world of homespun clothes and local food, with a horizon defined by how far he could walk in a day. The compass, the printing press and gunpowder had changed history more than any empire or religion. But the surplus brought by these developments had been quickly gobbled up by a growing population.

During the 18th century, a wave of inventiveness released mankind from this tail-chasing economy. Between 1500 and 1820, the British population quintupled but its per capita GDP also rose two and a half times. Britain had pioneered powerful new ways of getting and spending that were soon copied by other countries with enough financial and mechanical resources.

The historical question is: why Britain? What was peculiar to a smallish island in north-west Europe that turned it into the first industrial nation? Rosen isn’t the first writer to attempt an answer, but I can think of no other book that combines so many aspects of the story so clearly and elegantly.

Rosen’s recurring motif is Stephenson’s Rocket. Rather than the traditional view that the Rocket symbolises the beginnings of steam locomotion, Rosen sees it as the culmination of experiments that began nearly 2,000 years before, when Heron of Alexandria demonstrated a crude steam turbine. He writes: “The puzzle of the Rocket is why it was built to run from Manchester to Liverpool, and not from Paris to Toulouse, or Mumbai to Benares, or Beijing to Hangzhou.”

The explanations cover a lot of the familiar ground: waterlogged mines needing more efficient drainage, the questioning nature of Protestantism, and British patent laws that added, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “the fuel of interest to the fire of genius”.

Rosen, an American, argues that the anglophone world was the first to succeed industrially because it “democratised the nature of invention” by breaking down scientific elites and letting craftsmen in on their secrets. A new breed of man arose – the artisan-engineer-entrepreneurs such as James Watt and George Stephenson. The Victorian hagiographies of Samuel Smiles turned them into heroes, a status that later became academically unfashionable. Here Rosen restores their work to a place of honour.

Like the Rocket, this book isn’t perfect. No matter how lucid the writing, even simple inventions such as Watt’s separate condenser are difficult to grasp without diagrams; and sometimes, abashed at his own seriousness, the writer introduces an aw-shucks note to his text. But its scope and lively intelligence make it the best kind of popular account. Anyone who has ever wondered over Britain’s exceptional contribution to the modern world should read it.

Ian Jack is author of ‘The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain’ (Jonathan Cape)

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.