Arts and Minds

Arts and Minds PDF Author: Anton Howes
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691207615
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
"For almost 300 years, an organisation has quietly tried to change almost every aspect of life in Britain. That organisation is the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, often known simply as the Royal Society of Arts. It has acted as Britain's private national improvement agency, in every way imaginable - essentially, a society for the improvement of everything and anything. This book is its history. From its beginnings in a coffee house in the mid-eighteenth century, the Society has tried to change Britain's art, industry, laws, music, environment, education, and even culture. It has sometimes even succeeded. It has been a prize-fund for innovations, a platform for Victorian utilitarian reformers, a convenor of disparate interest groups, and the focal point for social movements. There has never been an organisation quite like it, constantly having to reinvent itself to find something new to improve. The book rewrites many of the old official histories of the Society and updates them to the present day, incorporating over half a century of further research into the periods they covered, along with new insights into the organisation's evolution. The book reveals the hidden and often surprising history of how a few public-spirited people tried to make their country better, offering lessons from their triumphs and their failures for all would-be reformers today"--

Arts and Minds

Arts and Minds PDF Author: Anton Howes
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691207615
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
"For almost 300 years, an organisation has quietly tried to change almost every aspect of life in Britain. That organisation is the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, often known simply as the Royal Society of Arts. It has acted as Britain's private national improvement agency, in every way imaginable - essentially, a society for the improvement of everything and anything. This book is its history. From its beginnings in a coffee house in the mid-eighteenth century, the Society has tried to change Britain's art, industry, laws, music, environment, education, and even culture. It has sometimes even succeeded. It has been a prize-fund for innovations, a platform for Victorian utilitarian reformers, a convenor of disparate interest groups, and the focal point for social movements. There has never been an organisation quite like it, constantly having to reinvent itself to find something new to improve. The book rewrites many of the old official histories of the Society and updates them to the present day, incorporating over half a century of further research into the periods they covered, along with new insights into the organisation's evolution. The book reveals the hidden and often surprising history of how a few public-spirited people tried to make their country better, offering lessons from their triumphs and their failures for all would-be reformers today"--

Technology in Early America

Technology in Early America PDF Author: Brooke Hindle
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807838640
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
This interpretative essay and extensive bibliography surveying the chronology and major characteristics of American technology before 1850 is the first available guide in this period to the rapidly developing field of the history of technology. Originally published in 1966. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Industrial Britain Under the Regency

Industrial Britain Under the Regency PDF Author: W.O. Henderson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113661303X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
In this book W. O. Henderson has brought together in English translation the journals of four foreign visitors who travelled in England and Scotland in the years immediately following the Napoleonic wars, in a way which may be regarded as a sequel to his recent book on J. C. Fischer’s diaries of industrial Britain. Two of the travellers whose journals are included in this volume were Swiss industrialists. Hans Caspar Escher was both a professional architect and the founder of the famous engineering firm of Esther Wyss of Zürich, Bodmer, also of Zürich, lived in England for many years and was recognised as an inventor of genius. The other accounts of industrial Britain in the Regency era are a report by the Prussian Factory Commissioner May and a short survey of the Newcastle upon Tyne colliery railways by the French government engineer Louis de Gallois. The four diaries show how informed foreign visitors were impressed by the way in which Britain had survived the perils of Napoleon’s Continental System and was now forging ahead to consolidate her position as the workshop of the world. This book was first published in 1968.

Inventing the Industrial Revolution

Inventing the Industrial Revolution PDF Author: Christine MacLeod
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521893992
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This book examines the development of the English patent system and its relationship with technical change during the period between 1660 and 1800, when the patent system evolved from an instrument of royal patronage into one of commercial competition among the inventors and manufacturers of the Industrial Revolution. It analyses the legal and political framework within which patenting took place and gives an account of the motivations and fortunes of patentees, who obtained patents for a variety of purposes beyond the simple protection of an invention. It includes the first in-depth attempt to gauge the reliability of the patent statistics as a measure of inventive activity and technical change in the early part of the Industrial Revolution, and suggests that the distribution of patents is a better guide to the advance of capitalism than to the centres of inventive activity. It also queries the common assumption that the chief goal of inventors was to save labour, and examines contemporary criticism of the patent system in the light of the changing conceptualisation of invention among natural scientists and political economists.

Science Versus Practice

Science Versus Practice PDF Author: Robert Bud
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719010705
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description


An Empire on Display

An Empire on Display PDF Author: Peter H. Hoffenberg
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520922969
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 632

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Book Description
The exhibitions of the Victorian and Edwardian eras are the lens through which this book examines the economic, cultural, and social forces that helped define Britain and the Empire. It focuses on exhibitions in England, Australia, and India from the Great Exhibition to the Festival of Empire.

Brewing Science, Technology and Print, 1700–1880

Brewing Science, Technology and Print, 1700–1880 PDF Author: James Sumner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317319303
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
How did the brewing of beer become a scientific process? Sumner explores this question by charting the theory and practice of the trade in Britain and Ireland during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Cotton

Cotton PDF Author: Giorgio Riello
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107328225
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 660

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Book Description
Today's world textile and garment trade is valued at a staggering $425 billion. We are told that under the pressure of increasing globalisation, it is India and China that are the new world manufacturing powerhouses. However, this is not a new phenomenon: until the industrial revolution, Asia manufactured great quantities of colourful printed cottons that were sold to places as far afield as Japan, West Africa and Europe. Cotton explores this earlier globalised economy and its transformation after 1750 as cotton led the way in the industrialisation of Europe. By the early nineteenth century, India, China and the Ottoman Empire switched from world producers to buyers of European cotton textiles, a position that they retained for over two hundred years. This is a fascinating and insightful story which ranges from Asian and European technologies and African slavery to cotton plantations in the Americas and consumer desires across the globe.

Wheels, Clocks, and Rockets

Wheels, Clocks, and Rockets PDF Author: Donald Stephen Lowell Cardwell
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393321753
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 596

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Book Description
A prime example of how to write a history of an immense and technical subject ....a winner.--New Scientist

Wheels, Clocks, and Rockets: A History of Technology (The Norton History of Science)

Wheels, Clocks, and Rockets: A History of Technology (The Norton History of Science) PDF Author: Donald Cardwell
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393352528
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 596

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Book Description
"A prime example of how to write a history of an immense and technical subject ....a winner."—New Scientist As technology transforms our lives at an ever quickening rate, Donald Cardwell reminds us that technological innovation is not created in a vacuum—rather, it is the product of the successful interaction between social change, scientific developments, and political vision. In this wide-ranging, "spirited" (Booklist) survey of the machines and tools that humans have developed throughout history, Cardwell not only explains the mechanical technicalities but also delves into the underlying trends that have culminated in eras of great change. In particular, he highlights the eighteenth century as a watershed in the modern history of technology, analyzing how scientific developments in physics and chemistry spurred the mechanical innovations of the Industrial Revolution. From the steam engine to electrical power to nuclear energy to today's world of electronics and computers, this book opens a discussion of how science and technology together change our lives. Originally published as The Norton History of Technology.