Birmingham Capitalists and Russian Workers
At the end of the eighteenth century the Russians were in want of technologists. Eric Robinson describes how they turned for help to the engineering skills of Birmingham.
The Birmingham engineering firm of Boulton and Watt was the first to establish a really solid reputation throughout Europe, and it was natural that it should come to the notice of those Russian philosophers who, towards the close of the eighteenth century, were considering how to close the gap in technical achievement between themselves and the other nations of Europe.
But other moves had been made before then. Russian scientists had already established relationships with that catalyst of all scientific exchange, Benjamin Franklin, so that the American Philosophical Society and the Russian Academy of Science were in touch with each other.1
It may, indeed, have been through Franklin’s suggestion that the first steps were taken to create closer ties with English and Scottish philosophers, particularly with members of the Lunar Society of Birmingham such as Boulton and Watt.
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