The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

A.D. 1689 —1776. for smelt- ing in blast furnaces, and for puddling. 524 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM who devoted themselves for three generations to the im- provement of the trade. The turning-point in the history of the industry may be dated however at 1760. In that year the Carron Works were founded; and the blast furnaces, which Roebuck erected, were built with a view to the use of coal, Still, the progress was not very rapid till about 1790. when steam-engines were introduced to work the blast- furnaces. With this more powerful blast they were able to save one-third of the coal hitherto used in smelting. The old blast-furnaces had been worked by water, and considerable ingenuity had to be exercised in order to get a powerful and uninterrupted blast? The effect of these improvements was unprecedented, and in 1796 the production of pig-iron was nearly double what it had been eight years before. Mr Pitt had proposed to tax coal in 1796, and pig-iron in 1797, but he was forced to abandon both projects. When the latter plan was revived by Lord Henry Petty in 1806, the Bill passed the second reading by a narrow majority, but was dropped in Committee. The returns which were made, and discussions which took place in connection with these proposals, have put on record an immense amount of information in regard to the manufacture of pig-iron, at the time when these new inventions caused it to advance with the greatest rapidity. Shortly before these improvements in blast furnaces had been introduced, two very important inventions had been made by Mr Cort, of Gosport; in 1783 he obtained a patent for converting pig-iron into malleable iron with the aid of coal, in a common air-furnace, by puddling?; in the following year he obtained a patent for manufacturing the malleable iron into bars, by means of rollers instead of the forge hammers which had been hitherto in vogue. Like so many of the other inventors, Mr Cort derived little personal benefit from inventions which have been of world-wide importance, which pig-iron had been converted into bar-iron with the help of charcoal (35. 87). Statistics as to the amount of coal and wood consumed in these works just before this invention will be found in Whitworth, Advantages of Inland Navigation, Pp. 3. 89 (table). 1 Scrivenor, History of the Iron Trade, 87. 2 See the account of the Devon Iron-works (Clackmannan), in 8ir J. Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland (1795), x1v. 626, $ Roebuck also had claims to this invention,

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