Category: Industrial Revolution

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

14/4/2020

Click here to In 1843, while performing a magic trick for his children, Isambard Kingdom Brunel accidentally inhaled a half sovereign coin, which became lodged in his windpipe.

The first attempt to free the coin by using as special pair of forceps didn't work, however, the second effort seems comical now, but no doubt wasn't then, involved a machine devised by Brunel (I'm not too sure that it was designed for this purpose) that eventually shook it loose.

Thank goodness this great man didn't choke to death, or we would not have had that wonderful bridge that spans the River Tamar between Devon and Cornwall or The Great Western Railway terminus at Paddington.edit.

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Jethro Tull

21/2/2018

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It was during the reign of George III that England underwent an agricultural revolution. Men like Berkshire born Jethro Tull, who died this day in 1740*, invented new farming methods that would improve the lives of those working on the land.

Jethro Tull's plans for a career in law and politics were derailed due to ill health. Following his marriage, he moved to one of his father's farms in Oxfordshire. It was not long after this move into farming that he discovered that the old way of planting seeds was not very efficient. In the latter part of 1699 Tull worked on his ideas for a seed drill which he had perfected by 1701, before then furrows were dug by hand and the seeds were planted too close together. Tull's drill had a rotating grooved cylinder, not only did it prove to be cost-effective but it made the crop easier to weed.

Jethro Tull's other invention with the aid to improving farming methods was a new plough. This plough had special blades that cut deeply into the soil and resulted in the grass and roots being pulled up and left on the surface to dry, these newly ploughed fields can be seen up and down the country and especially on the land that surrounds my village as you can see in the last of the images below.

Thanks to Jethro Tull and other innovative and forward-thinking landowners farming output almost doubled. The increase in the use of crops grown as food for animals allowed farmers to keep more livestock and this meant more meat was produced and sold in the markets to feed the growing population, this revolution saw the introduction of not only the new systems of cropping and but also of selective breeding.

Interestingly, it has been argued that the agricultural revolution did not happen at all, that the increase in farm production was a slow progression of events beginning in the mid-sixteenth century and ending in the eighteenth.

Jethro Tull was buried on the 9th March 1740 in the village of Hungerford in Berkshire and is buried at St Bartholomew's Church in Lower Basildon where his gravestone can be found today.

Bibliography
* - Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 1924

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James Watt

25/8/2017

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James Watt was a Scottish engineer, famous for his improvements to the steam engine.

The steam or Atmospheric Engine was used to pump water from coal mines. This steam engine had been invented in 1712 by Thomas Newcomen, but it is Watt who is remembered as one of the great engineers of the industrial revolution.

Watt was born to a wealthy shipwright from Greenock on the 19th January in 1736. At the start of his engineering career he began making mathematical instruments, but was soon branching out into the world of mechanics.

At the age of twenty-eight, Watt was given one of Newcomen's engines to repair, but he soon came to the conclusion that it was far from efficient and Watt's changes doubled fuel efficiency.

Thomas Newcomen's engine could be found in hundred of coal mines, but it was soon replaced with Watt's new design, and as stated previously, it was Watt, not Newcomen who is credited with the advances in the mining industry. Of course mine owners welcomed the change, for there was a greater demand for coal, they felt the benefits in their pockets. However, improved efficiency has its draw backs, and as a result coal mines got deeper and deeper and coal mining became more and more dangerous, for instance, in one year in an unnamed coal mine, 58 deaths out of a total of 349, involved children thirteen years or younger.

James Watt died on the 25th August 1819 and is buried at Handsworth near Birmingham.

You can read about life in the coal mines by clicking on the link below.

meanderingthroughtime.weebly.com/taylor-of-yorkshire.html

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Sir Humphry Davy

4/9/2016

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One of Cornwall's famous sons, Sir Humphry Davy was born in Penzance on the 7th December 1778.

Davy was later educated in the Cornwall's county town of Truro and this was followed by an apprenticeship to a Penzance surgeon. In 1797, Davy took up chemistry and was taken on as an assistant at the Medical Pneumatic Institution in Bristol. It was here he experimented with various new gases by inhaling them which nearly cost him his life on more than one occasion, eventually though, this experimentation led to the discovery of the anesthetic effect of what we know as laughing gas.

In 1815, George Stephenson, from Newcastle, claimed he was the inventor of a safety lamp for the use in coal mines but it is Davy who is credited with the invention presented to the Royal Society on 3 November 1815,

This lamp allowed coal to be mined from deep coal seams reducing the dangers of explosions from methane gas. The lamp, consisted of a wick with the flame enclosed inside a mesh screen, Davy discovered that if the mesh was fine enough, it would not ignite the methane.

Sir Humphry Davy died in Geneva, Switzerland, on 29 May 1829

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Who is this monster? And what is his name?

2/11/2014

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Standing seven feet tall and with a wingspan of fifteen feet, this sculpture by Robert Stubley stands in the village of Sneinton in Nottinghamshire. What do you think it represents?

You will be forgiven if, like me, you thought it was representative of an ancient folk tale or that it stands on the site where a medieval knight met a mighty dragon. This beast does not represent a battle between good and evil, but something far more frightening than that, this was a 'monster' of our own making that caused suffering and death to many many people.

In 1914, Robert Mellor a local historian, wrote a series of articles about Nottingham and its surrounding areas, these were published in his work Old Nottingham Suburbs: Then and Now, and of the 'dragon' of Sneinton Mellor wrote:

Who is this monster? And what is his name?

"For more than half a century there has existed in certain parts of Nottingham a monster who has devoured in the first year of their lives a large number of infants, and, what is worse, probably an equal number who have survived have dragged out a pitiable existence in weakness, small in stature, deformed, or anaemic, with diseases, lack of energy, unable to maintain themselves, and therefore dependent on others or the public charge; and, worse still, some have had a natural tendency to vice or crime."

His name is Slum.

1914 Map of Sneinton

There have been people living in Sneinton from as far back as the Norman Conquests, and up to the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, they lived quiet, relatively happy lives as they looked down from the hill on which the village stands and were able to watch the flow of the Trent, Nottingham's mighty river, however, times were changing. The major landowner in this area at the time was Charles Pierrepont, 1st Earl Manvers, who held land not only in Nottinghamshire but in a number of other English counties, and whose wealth was earned from this land and the properties within it, but as England workforce moved from working within agriculture into local factories, the family were forced to sell much of their estates, and consequently, the land in and around Sneinton was developed to build housing for Nottingham's factory workers.

Nottingham's Slum Housing

Within a few years, these properties that ranged from tiny back-to-back and terraced housing fell into disrepair and the once green agricultural landscape was now crowded with cramped tenements that were plagued by sickness and poverty, and it is now we can read of the poorest of Sneinton's inhabitants living exactly as Robert Mellor described in his book.

It was not until the 1930s that we see life in Sneinton go full circle with its slum demolished and the land cleared and redevelopment taking place, but the village Mellor wrote of has not been forgotten. The Renewal Trust, a local group whose aims are community regeneration, asked the residents of Sneinton what piece of public art they would like to represent their area and it was this dragon they chose.

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Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Jethro Tull

James Watt

Sir Humphry Davy

Who is this monster? And what is his name?

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