The Industrial Enlightenment is widely thought to have been a period when “science” and “technology” became intimately intertwined. In his 1791 book on the building of the Eddystone lighthouse (completed in 1759), the English engineer John Smeaton praised the Royal Society for being more than a group of abstract theoreticians. This article looks at the fellows of Smeaton's Royal Society network who contributed knowledge, reports, specimens, and inventions solicited by Smeaton when he was working on this lighthouse project. I show, (...) in line with other recent research on this topic, that the “artisans” of the 18th century did not confine themselves to practical know-how, and that “scholars” were not merely interested in abstract philosophising; instead, the figures I look at in this paper were hybrid knowers who possessed useful knowledge and book learning. I argue that the advice solicited by Smeaton during the building of the lighthouse was characterised not by exchanges between theory and practice, but by a combining of different types of knowledge from separate fields. A second feature of this intellectual co-operation is that it was not centred on a group of practical industrialists or engineers, but rather it was the Royal Society that served as the common denominator, bringing all of the characters in our story into contact with each other. This is reflected in the subject matter involved, which was characteristic of the research focus of the virtuoso tradition in the 18th-century Royal Society. Smeaton's contact with this tradition was influenced by his friendships, his social activities, and, indirectly, by the way that the dissensions that occupied the Royal Society during the early 1780s impacted his retrospective account of the project. (shrink)

Gaslight emerged as a new industry after 1800 in Britain, but not in other countries in Europe where the technology existed as well. Among the many groups trying, it was only the firm of Boulton & Watt that succeeded in commercializing the invention for two important reasons. The first was that they possessed skills and experience related to ironworking and to making scientific instruments, both of which they used as they developed gaslight apparatus. This development involved an extensive series of (...) experiments that ultimately had its root in James Watt's own work with pneumatic chemistry. The second reason was that they possessed many resources such as access to capital, their existing network of industrial customers, and their abilities to publicize their work. As with the steam engine, the firm proved adept at advertising. Boulton & Watt did not give their full attention to gaslight except in two spurts between 1805 and 1809, and by around 1812 they had lost almost all interest in the technology. By this time, however, they had solved many problems associated with scaling up gaslight apparatus for industrial use, they had trained many people who would go on to do further important work in the early years of the industry, and they had drawn extensive public attention to the new invention. Finally, their advertising involved elevating the status of William Murdoch as an inventor while minimizing the role of the firm. (shrink)

ArgumentApprenticeship was probably the largest mode of organized learning in early modern European societies, and artisan practitioners commonly began as apprentices. Yet little is known about how youths actually gained skills. I develop a model of vocational pedagogy that accounts for the characteristics of apprenticeship and use a range of legal and autobiographical sources to examine the contribution of different forms of training in England. Apprenticeship emerges as a relatively narrow channel, in which the master’s contribution to training was weakly (...) defined and executed conservatively. The creation of complementary channels of formal instruction was constrained by cost and coordination problems. When we consider a range of British youths who obtained advanced skills as artisan practitioners (and engaged in invention or pursued natural philosophical interests), we see the importance of individual agency over institutional structures. For these youths, training could involve rejecting apprenticeship, engaging in periods of advanced study, including time in multiple workshops after the end of apprenticeship, and parallel campaigns to access scarce books and communities of scholarship. (shrink)