Industrial Revolutionaries: The Making of the Modern World 1776-1914 »

Gavin Weightman’s sweeping history of the industrial revolution shows how, in less than one hundred and fifty years, an unlikely band of scientists, spies, entrepreneurs, and political refugees took a world made of wood and powered by animals, wind, and water, and made it into something entirely new, forged of steel and iron, and powered by steam and fossil fuels. Weightman weaves together the dramatic stories of giants such as Edison, Watt, Wedgwood, and Daimler, with lesser-known or entirely forgotten characters, including a group of Japanese samurai who risked their lives to learn the secrets of the West, and John “Iron Mad” Wilkinson, who didn’t let war between England and France stop him from plumbing Paris. Distilling complex technical achievements, outlandish figures, and daring adventures into an accessible narrative that spans the globe as industrialism spreads, The Industrial Revolutionaries is a remarkable work of original, engaging history.

The Barnes & Noble Review

As familiar as the outlines of the Industrial Revolution are, no one will be surprised to learn that every steam-powered invention has a murky history of rivalries, precedents, and counterclaims. However unsurprising it may be, it is still fun to learn that a century before Edison had his Tesla, Watt had his Trevithick. The more gripping tale that Gavin Weightman has to tell in Industrial Revolutionaries, though, is of the commercial cold war waged especially by England and France through and over iron and steam, with many sidewise glances toward America. Gentlemen cross the Channel again and again to sniff out the secrets of new engines and recruit defectors -- a British artisan might face prison if he tried to return home after working in France -- while Robert Fulton tries to sell torpedoes to Napoleon before offering them to Nelson. The most fascinating and unfamiliar tale is that of the "Chosun Five." At a time when the shipwrecked Japanese fishermen rescued by American whalers might be looked on by the Shoguns as traitors infected by the West and even be executed, in 1854 five Samurai risked everything to secretly travel to Britain and bring knowledge of 19th-century technology back to Japan. Ten years later British vessels were shelling the Japanese coast, trying to force Japan to accept all at once the revolution that European industrialists had staged so fitfully over the previous century. --Sean Redmond

List of Illustrations vi

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction 1

1 Spies 10

2 Mad About Iron 22

3 The Toolbag Travellers 37

4 The Cornishman's Puffer 48

5 They Kept Their Heads 67

6 Some Yankees in the Works 90

7 The Railway Men 117

8 Cowcatchers and Timber Tracks 136

9 Les Rosbifs Go To Work 152

10 A Prophet Without Honour 173

11 A Blast of Hot Air 190

12 Morse Decoded 197

13 The Palace of Wonders 213

14 'A Very Handsome Tail' 232

15 The Petroleum Pioneers 252

16 The Steel Revolution 270

17 Of Scots and Samurai 285

18 Horsepower 299

19 The Wizard of Menlo Park 324

20 The Terror of the Torpedo 342

21 The Synthetic World 361

Postscript 383

Notes 394

Bibliography 402

Index 407