Industrial Revolution

In the year after ‘Mr. Madison’s War’, writes W.I. Cunningham, three Massachusetts businessmen helped to transfer the Industrial Revolution from England to America.

Two centuries before the Swinging Sixties the weakening of social customs caused by the Industrial Revolution led to a modest transformation in people’s sexual behaviour, says Emma Griffin.

W.H. Chaloner describes the eventful and varied life of a sometime steam engine manufacturer, champion boxer, and, in later life, firefighter.

The first sod of the longest railway on earth was turned by the last of the Tsars in 1891; Hilda Hookham describes an epic process of construction, with the line finally completed in 1904.

Alan D. Dyer describes how Britain’s industrial development began when coal replaced wood during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

During the Victorian Age, writes Courtney Dainton, when many social reformers came from the upper classes, Smith was a philanthropist who had himself experienced the hardships of the very poor.

George Green describes the experiences of his grandfather, a typical Liverpool docker’s life of the late nineteenth century.

Derek W. Lawrence portrays 1769 as a fateful year for the world: Napoleon and Wellington were both born in it; and James Watt took out a patent for his momentous steam-engine.

Born near Leeds, a builder of bridges, canals and an inventor of mechanical equipment, George John Smeaton was an eminent forerunner of his profession.