The Age of the Projectors
Alex Keller describes how the closing years of the sixteenth century and the early decades of the seventeenth marked the first period in England of important technological advance.
Fitzdottrel: “But what is a Projector, I would conceive.”
Ingine: “Why one, sir, that projects wayes to enrich men or to make them great.”
(Ben Jonson, The Devil is an Ass, 1631).
The early years of the seventeenth century were frequently alarmed, amused or excited by reports of weird and ingenious machines, or quasi-chemical techniques, of devastating secret weapons and magnificent schemes for new canals, for draining swamps and for supplying water to great cities. It seems to have been an age bewitched by the possibilities of a mastery over matter just out of reach.
Sometimes it was perpetual motion, sometimes the philosopher’s stone for the transmutation of metals, or the universal dissolvent. The boundary between the feasible and the fantastic was still thin and uncertain. The name of projector was commonly applied to these mechanical inventors and the promoters of schemes for industrial expansion on the grand scale.
To continue reading this article you need to purchase a subscription, available from only £5.
Start my trial subscription now
If you have already purchased access, or are a print & archive subscriber, please ensure you are logged in.
Please email digital@historytoday.com if you have any problems.