He thanks Jeremy Atack, David Wishart, Carolyn Cooper, Leslie Sullivan, Julian Simon, Tim Sullivan, Jack Powelson, Thomas Hughes, and Paul Hohenberg for their helpful comments.Google Scholar

¹ Crafts, N. F. R., British Economic Growth During the Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 1985), p. 82. The productivity measure is total factor productivity, a ratio of total output to a weighted average of inputs.Google Scholar

² Landes, David, The Unbound Prometheus (Cambridge, MA, 1969), p. 78, 41.Google ScholarSee also Mathias, Peter, The First Industrial Nation (New York, 1969), p. 134Google Scholar; Hartwell, R. M., “The Causes of the Industrial Revolution” in Hartwell, R. M., ed., The Causes of the Industrial Revolution in England (London, 1967), p. 79Google Scholar; and Crafts, British Economic Growth, pp. 85–88.Google Scholar

³ McCloskey, Donald N., “The Industrial Revolution 1780–1860: A Survey,” in Floud, Roderick and McCloskey, Donald N., eds., The Economic History of Britain Since 1700 (Cambridge, 1981), p. 109.Google Scholar

⁴ Crafts, British Economic Growth, pp. 86–87.Google Scholar

⁵ Woodcroft, Bennet, Subject Matter Index of Patens of Invention (London, 1857).Google ScholarDates have been corrected using Gomme, A. A., “Date Corrections of English Patents, 1617–1752,” Transactions of the Newcomen Society 33 (1932/1933), pp. 159–64,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Jamieson, D. R., “Introduction,” in Woodcroft, Bennet, Alphabetical Index of Patentees of Inventions (London, 1857/1969), pp. v–xv. Definitions of the patent groups are in the Appendix. Additional detail about the source and of patent procedures is available upon request from the author.Google Scholar

⁶ I use the industry as a basis for classification because most writing about eighteenth-century English invention focuses on industrial sectors. In his discussion of this paper, Thomas Hughes noted that classification based on productive systems (for example, motive power or machine tools) might be more appropriate.Google Scholar

⁷ Schmookler, Jacob, Invention and Economic Growth (Cambridge, MA, 1966), p. 20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ See Pakes, Ariel and Simpson, Margaret, “Patent Renewal Data,” in Baily, M. N. and Winston, C., eds., Brookings Papers on Economic Activity: Microeconomics, 1989 (Washington, 1989), p. 365.Google Scholar

⁹ Scherer, F. M., “The Propensity to Patent,” International Journal of Industrial Organization, I (03. 1983), pp. 107–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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¹¹ Deane, Phyllis and Cole, W. A., British Economic Growth, 1688–1959 (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 156, 166.Google Scholar

¹² Both Christine MacLeod and Harold Dutton have argued that chemical inventions were easy to keep secret, so there was less incentive to patent. On the other hand, A. E. Musson and Eric Robinson's account of invention in the alkali industry shows that there was a keen interest in the protection afforded by patents. See MacLeod, Christine, Inventing the Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 106–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dutton, Harold I., The Patent System and Inventive Activity during the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1852 (Manchester, 1984), p. 119Google Scholar; Musson, A. E. and Robinson, Eric, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1969), pp. 352–71.Google Scholar

¹³ Employment data from Wood, G. H., The History of Wages in the Cotton Trade (London, 1910), pp. 127–28.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Landes, Unbound Prometheus, p. 40.Google Scholar

¹⁵ von Tunzelmann, G. N., “Technical Progress during the Industrial Revolution,” in Floud, and McCloskey, , eds., The Economic History of Britain Since 1700, vol. 1, pp. 143–62.Google Scholar

¹⁶ I will refer to the collective industrial, production machine, and steam engine groups of Tables 1 and 3 as the narrow set of technologically progressive sectors.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Dutton, Patent System, p. 208.Google Scholar

¹⁸ To avoid double-counting, any single patent is counted only once in the aggregated groups of Table 4. Since the groups of patents in Tables 1 and 3 are not mutually exclusive, the sum of their patents do not equal the totals in column 2 of Table 4.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Clow, Archibald and Clow, N. L., The Chemical Revolution (London, 1952), p. 91.Google Scholar Paul Hohenberg noted the same interrelated nature of chemical and other technologies in a later period; see Hohenberg, Paul, Chemicals in Western Europe: 1850–1914 (Chicago, 1967), pp. 30, 108–9, and chap. 6.Google Scholar

²⁰ Usher, A. P., A History of Mechanical Inventions (Cambridge, 1954), p. 355.Google Scholar

²¹ Clow and Clow, Chemical Revolution, pp. 251–54.Google Scholar

²² “Trigger” is Mathias's term. Mathias, First Industrial Nation, p. 9.Google Scholar

²³ Bowden, Witt, Industrial Society in England Towards the End of the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1925), pp. 54–55.Google Scholar

²⁴ Coleman, D. C., The Economy of England, 1450–1750 (London, 1977), pp. 155–56.Google Scholar

²⁵ Musson and Robinson, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution.Google Scholar

²⁶ For example, Ashton, T. S., The Industrial Revolution (London, 1948), pp. 14–16Google Scholar; see also Musson, A. E., Growth of British Industry (London, 1978), p. 75.Google Scholar

²⁷ MacLeod, Inventing the Industrial Revolution, chap. 11.Google Scholar

²⁸ Ashton, T. S., “Some Statistics of the Industrial Revolution in Britain,” The Manchester School, 16 (05 1948), pp. 217–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁹ The model is very simple, making log of total patents a function of population, an index for time, a dummy variable for periods of war, and interest rates.Google Scholar

³⁰ MacLeod, Inventing the Industrial Revolution, chap. 9.Google Scholar

³¹ Von Tunzelmann, “Technical Progress,” pp. 144–46.Google Scholar

³² Cole, W. A., “Eighteenth Century Growth Revisited” Explorations in Economic History, 10 (Summer 1973), pp. 327–48.Google Scholar

³³ Simon, Julian and Sullivan, Richard, “Population Size, Knowledge, Stock, and Other Determinants of Agricultural Publication and Patenting: England, 1541–1850,” Explorations in Economic History, 26 (01. 1989), pp. 21–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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³⁵ McCloskey, “Industrial Revolution,” p. 114.Google ScholarCrafts (British Economic Growth, p. 86) attributes 73 percent of growth of total factor productivity to these industries, indicating an even wider gulf between invention and innovation.Google Scholar

³⁶ Ashton, Industrial Revolution, p. 16.Google Scholar