A portrait of early industrial lives

Margaret C. Jacob

doi:10.1017/CBO9781107358355.002

1 - A portrait of early industrial lives

The Watts and Boultons, science and entrepreneurship

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014

Margaret C. Jacob

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Margaret C. Jacob: Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles

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Summary

Sometimes the lives of two men and their families open a previously obscured history and point toward the human capital expended, the striving and achievement at the heart of early industrial development. James Watt (b. 1736) of steam engine fame, and his partner, a manufacturer of metal objects, Matthew Boulton (b. 1728), need little introduction. The nature of their partnership does. It offers a paradigmatic example of the human qualities and shared values that propelled early industrial growth. Their partnership embodied a marriage between business sense and mechanical knowledge that together made possible the application of power technology to the mining and manufacturing process. Boulton did not simply supply the capital and Watt the know-how, as has been assumed. In the mid 1770s, Boulton and Watt established a partnership that rested on trust, thrift, mechanical knowledge, technical skill, and market experience.

Almost every successful partnership visible in the first generation of industrialists, from the 1780s to the 1820s, independently replicates the Boulton–Watt relationship. Sometimes the business acumen and mechanical knowledge rested in the same mind; most times it did not, as we shall see in the partnerships at work in textile manufacturing and coal mining. Mr. Clark, whom we met in the introduction, sought to bring his technical skills into contact with Lieven Bauwens, a Belgian but British-trained capitalist with a deep knowledge of the mechanization of cotton manufacturing.

Type: Chapter
Information: The First Knowledge Economy
Human Capital and the European Economy, 1750–1850
, pp. 20 - 56

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107358355.002 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2014

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