‘Glorious Times’: The Emergence of Mechanical Engineering in Early Industrial Britain, c. 1700-1850

Christine MacLeod and Alessandro Nuvolari

Brussels Economic Review, 2009, vol. 52, issue 3/4, 215-237

Abstract: The primary aim of this paper is to explore the significance of the emergence and growth of mechanical engineering as a distinct industrial activity in early industrial Britain. The paper provides a survey of the most important interpretations put forward concerning the role of mechanical engineering in the early phases of industrialization. These interpretations are then confronted with data on the growth of the sector and with an analysis of the patterns of innovation carried out by means of a study of patent data. Our results broadly confirm the role of the sector as the main engine of technical progress in this historical phase.

Keywords: Mechanical engineering; Machine making; Innovation; Patents; Industrial revolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N63 N73 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
Note: Numéro Spécial « Vers une nouvelle histoire économique des brevets ?» Editeurs :Claude Diebolt et Karine Pellier
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/8075 ... EOD-NUVOLARIpdf2.pdf ARTICLE MACLEOD-NUVOLARI pdf2 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bxr:bxrceb:2013/80759

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://hdl.handle.ne ... ulb.ac.be:2013/80759

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Brussels Economic Review from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Benoit Pauwels ().