Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-cphqk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-24T22:01:10.500Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A General-Purpose Technology at Work: The Corliss Steam Engine in the Late-Nineteenth-Century United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2004

NATHAN ROSENBERG  and
MANUEL TRAJTENBERG
NATHAN ROSENBERG
Affiliation:
Professor Emeritus, Department of Economics, Stanford University, Economics Bldg 228, Stanford, CA 94305-6072; and Fellow, Canadian Institute of Advanced Research. E-mail: [email protected].
MANUEL TRAJTENBERG
Affiliation:
Chairman, School of Economics, Tel Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel; Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research; and Fellow, Canadian Institute of Advanced Research. E-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The contribution to growth from the steam engine—Industrial Revolution icon and prime example of a “General Purpose Technology”—has remained unclear. This article examines the role that a particular design improvement in steam power, embodied in the Corliss engine, played in the growth of the U.S. economy in the late nineteenth century. Using detailed data on the location of Corliss engines and waterwheels and a two-stage estimation strategy, we show that the deployment of Corliss engines served as a catalyst for the industry's massive relocation into large urban centers, thus fueling agglomeration economies and further population growth.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 64 , Issue 1 , March 2004 , pp. 61 - 99
Copyright
© 2004 The Economic History Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen Zachariah. 1829 The Science of Mechanics. Providence, RI: Miller and Hammond
The American Machinist, various contemporary issues.
Atack Jeremy. 1979 “Fact in Fiction? Relative Costs of Steam and Water Power: A Simulation Approach.” Explorations in Economic History 16, no. 10 409–37.Google Scholar
Atack Jeremy, Fred Bateman, and Thomas Weiss. 1980 “The Regional Diffusion and Adoption of the Steam Engine in American Manufacturing.” This JOURNAL 40, no. 2 281– 308.Google Scholar
Bresnahan T., and M. Trajtenberg. “General Purpose Technologies: Engines of Growth?” Journal of Econometrics 65, no. 1 1995 83– 108.Google Scholar
Burn D. L. January 1931 “The Genesis of American Engineering Competition, 1850–1870.” Economic History Review 2, no. 6 292– 311.Google Scholar
Chandler A. D. Summer, 1972 “Anthracite Coal and the Beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in the United States.” The Business History Review 46 141–81.Google Scholar
Chandler A. D. 1977 The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press
Clark V. S. 1929 History of Manufactures in the United States: 1607–1860, Vol. 2. New York: McGraw-Hill
Corliss George H. 1870 In the Matter of the Petition of George H. Corliss for an Extension of His letters Patent for Improvements in Steam Engines. Providence, RI: Providence Press Company, Printers
The Corliss Papers collection at the John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence, RI.
Crump John M. Jr. “Edwin Reynolds.” Northeast Florida Section, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (no date, no pagination).
David P. A. 1991 “Computer and Dynamo: The Modern Productivity Paradox in a Not-Too-Distant Mirror.” In Technology and Productivity: The Challenge for Economic Policy, 315–47. Paris: OECD
Du Boff R. B. December, 1967 “The Introduction of Electrical Power in American Manufacturing.” Economic History Review 20 509–18.Google Scholar
Fenichel A. H. 1966 “Growth and Diffusion of Power in Manufacturing 1839–1919.” In Output, Employment and Productivity in the United States after 1800. National Bureau of Economic Research, Studies in Income and Wealth Vol. 30, 443–78. New York, Columbia University Press
Fishlow A., 1966 “Productivity and Technological Change in the Railroad Sector, 1840–1910,” In Output, Employment and Productivity in the United States after 1800. National Bureau of Economic Research, Studies in Income and Wealth, Vol. 30. New York, Columbia University Press
Fogel Robert W. 1964 Railroads and American Economic Growth: Essays in Econometric History. Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press
Helpman E., and Manuel Trajtenberg. 1998 “A Time to Sow and a Time to Reap: Growth Based on General Purpose Technologies.” In General Purpose Technologies and Economic Growth, edited by E. Helpman, 55– 83. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Helpman E., Ed. 1998 General Purpose Technologies and Economic Growth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Horwitz M., 1977 The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Hunter L. C. 1979 A History of Industrial Power in the US, 1780–1930, Vol 1. Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia
Hunter L. C. 1985 A History of Industrial Power in the United States, 1780–1930, Vol. 2: Steam Power. Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia
Krugman P. 1991 Geography and Trade. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press
Lesley J. P. 1859 The Iron Manufacturer's Guide to the Furnaces, Forges and Rolling Mills of the US. New York: J. Wiley
Manuscript Collection on the Textile Industry at the Baker Library, Harvard Business School.
Mechanical Engineering, various contemporary issues.
Power, various contemporary issues.
Rosenberg Nathan. 1976 “Technological Change in the Machine Tool Industry: 1840–1910.” In Perspectives on Technology, 9– 31. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Rosenberg Nathan. 1982 “Technological Interdependence in the American Economy.” In Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics, 55– 80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Rosenberg Nathan. 1996 “Uncertainty and Technological Change.” In The Mosaic of Economic Growth, edited by Ralph Landau, Timothy Taylor, and Gavin Wright, Part 5. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press
Rosenberg Nathan, and Manuel Trajtenberg. September 2001 “A General Purpose Technology at Work: The Corliss Steam Engine in the Late Nineteenth Century US.” National Bureau of Economic Research, WP 8485Google Scholar
Sheldon F. F. 1892 “Power and Speed in Cotton Mills.” Proceedings of the 27th Annual Meeting of the Northeast Cotton Manufacturers' Association. Boston
Shillitto F. W. 1899 HandBook of Corliss Steam Engines, 2d ed. Bridgeport, CT: The American Industrial Publication Company
Smith Thomas Russell. 1944 The Cotton Textile Industry of Fall River, Massachusetts: A Study of Industrial Localization. New York: King's Crown Press
Sokoloff K. 1988 “Inventive Activity in Early Industrial America: Evidence from Patent Records, 1790–1846.” This JOURNAL 48, no. 4 813–50.Google Scholar
Taylor Frank H. History of the Alan Wood Iron and Steel Company, 1790–1820. Published for private circulation, no date.
Temin Peter. 1964 Iron and Steel in Nineteenth Century America, an Economic Inquiry. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Temin Peter. 1966 “Steam and Waterpower in the Early Nineteenth Century.” This JOURNAL 26, no. 2 187– 205.Google Scholar
Thurston R. H. 1884 Stationary Steam Engines: Especially as Adapted to Electric Lighting Purposes. New York
Thurston R. H. 1939 A History of the Growth of the Steam Engine. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press
Transactions of the ASME, various contemporary issues.
Tribe J. 1903 Compound Corliss Engines. Milwaukee, WI:
Trowbridge W. P. 1880 Reports on the Water-Power of the United States: Statistics of Power and Machinery Employed in Manufactures. Thomas Zeller 10th U.S. Census
U.S. Census Office, Department of Interior. 1885 Statistics of Power and Machinery Employed in Manufactures, Reports on the Water-Power of the United States, Part 1. Washington, DC: GPO
U.S. Congress, House. 1833 Documents Relative to the Manufactures in the United States, collected by the Secretary of the Treasury, Louis McLane; Exec.Doc. No. 308, 22nd Cong., 1st sess.
U.S. Congress, House. 1838 Report on the Steam Engines in the United States, H. Doc. No. 21, 25th Cong., 3d sess.
von Tunzelmann G. N. 1978 Steam Power and British Industrialization to 1860. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Wright Gavin. 1981 “Cheap Labor and Southern Textiles, 1880–1930.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 96 605–29.Google Scholar
Yonekawa S. “Flotation Booms in the Cotton Industry, 1870–1890: A Comparative Study.” Business History Review 61 (Winter 1987): 551–81.