The story about the need for technical knowledge to access coal in Northumberland’s deep mines has an analogue in the manufacturing of cotton. For decades, in both industries, we have been told that learned knowledge – as distinct from practice – had nothing to do with the First Industrial Revolution, that skilled artisans who seldom cracked a book held the key to British industrial prowess in cotton. In the production of cotton cloth, emphasis has been laid upon water power as distinct from steam, and thus the knowledge of mechanics – the science of local motion – needed to employ power technology has been neglected.

As with Boulton and Watt, two leaders in mechanized cotton production will have to stand in for the first generation of cotton manufacturers. As a leading cotton baron and one of the subjects of this chapter, John Kennedy (b. 1769) eventually became a wealthy man. In order to assemble his factory Kennedy had to understand different rates of velocity and the impact that a steam engine would have on spinning. Just as important, he had to understand and approve – or alter – plans for the mechanization of his cotton factory drawn up by civil engineers, in this case Boulton and Watt. Eventually Kennedy, in partnership with James M’Connel (b. 1762), figured out how to use the Watt engine effectively, and together they became among the leading cotton industrialists of Manchester.