Full transcript
0:00[Music]
0:06[Applause]
0:08[Music]
0:16[Music]
0:26[Music]
0:28come
0:31[Music]
0:36in 1830 the world's first Railway
0:39commuters glimpsed a faster future where
0:42life would never be the
0:46same they were passing through an area
0:48that had exploded onto the
0:52map it was a new kind of
0:57society in the previous 100 years years
1:00Britain had gone mad for buying and
1:04selling this was the first high
1:06production High consumption
1:10economy once it had been started there
1:13was no stopping
1:14[Music]
1:20[Music]
1:28it visitors were Amazed by the scale of
1:32the
1:34changes it is impossible to behold this
1:38without being convinced that whatever
1:40other nations may do they will never
1:42equal England in respect of
1:45[Music]
1:52manufacturer vast Bellows give roaring
1:54blasts which make the whole edifice
1:57horribly Sublime
2:02I thought that I was gazing into the
2:04mouth of dant
2:09hell it's in a spot like this that one
2:12sees the sources of British
2:15[Music]
2:19power this was the beginning of
2:23Industry people's lives will be changed
2:28forever
2:30the question is why did it start in
2:34Britain this is the puzzle that is
2:36facing our five
2:38investigators they meet in Cambridge to
2:40pull their
2:42knowledge they are trying to solve the
2:44riddle of the origin of the modern
2:48world eventually their investigations
2:50will follow a chain of chance and
2:52Circumstance that will take them back
2:5410,000
2:57years the complete story will cover all
3:00parts of the
3:03world but for now there is a more local
3:07question why did the Industrial
3:09Revolution happen in Britain and not one
3:11of her European neighbors countries like
3:14France and Germany weren't so very
3:16different after
3:18all go back to
3:201730 look at France in comparison with
3:23England there doesn't Prime to any
3:26intense purposes seem to be any reason
3:28why you would pick
3:30England especially the Midlands in the
3:32northwest of England over what was
3:34called then the great nation
3:37France for instance someone who took the
3:40rocket as the symbol of success for the
3:42Industrial Revolution might well observe
3:45that the key thing about it was the
3:46mechanics the systems of gears and
3:48levers that drive it and that's what's
3:51really
3:52[Music]
3:54new now if you look for the origins of
3:57mechanisms like that in the previous
3:59century you'd be most likely to find
4:01them in
4:03France in 1730 you would find them in
4:07the Ingenuity of the craftsmen who made
4:09autometer machines that mimicked animal
4:12and human
4:14[Music]
4:19actions these machines were exhibited
4:21for an eager paying
4:23public they were even shown to royalty
4:26and those who made them gained Fame and
4:29Fort
4:30[Music]
4:42tun the greatest of the automatan makers
4:45was a man named Jack
4:49Deans his most famous work was an
4:52automatic duck lifelike and fully
4:55working down to the Last
4:58Detail
5:00David's secret is making a copy of the
5:03duck he's being financed by an eccentric
5:06Belgian collector on the condition that
5:09he will never make a second
5:11one so the whole cycle is that the Wings
5:15open come forward go back fold up that's
5:18right and the whole body rears up like
5:20that and the tail feathers display the
5:22tail feathers come up like that and then
5:25of course he also feeds from the
5:27original description as you know he
5:30actually feeds from the bowl then
5:33process of digestion he defecates with a
5:36a horrible smell so it was said it
5:38almost certainly was a trick anyway
5:41we're going to use a trick got to do
5:42that as well what sort of trick do you
5:44have in mind well actually I'm going to
5:45blow bubbles up through the bowl and
5:47have a some sort of wodge come up from
5:50underneath him rather than going through
5:51the body which I think is surely so much
5:53going on that nobody's going to notice
5:55anyone what's been the most difficult
5:57part of the I think the wings the wings
5:59which are not completed that um after 6
6:02months of lots of little pieces of blank
6:04paper finally came up with that one and
6:07that does appear to work this is as I
6:09said just a boxwood mockup for the final
6:11thing this is all going to be metal this
6:13all be in Copper these Vil disting the
6:15Ducks and all the rest of it and I've
6:17got some horrifying photographs of ducks
6:19wings um you know all cut up and all the
6:22it's amazing that got real duck oh yeah
6:24got real duck wings beautiful things
6:26aren't they look at that
6:27coloring horrified think one actually
6:30eats chicken wings and they're the most
6:32superb pieces of mechanism you know the
6:34muscles and so you think God was a very
6:37good engineer I think he was you got to
6:39hand it to him but just how that how he
6:41managed that one I'll never
6:43know when voon first comes to Paris from
6:46Grena in the late 1720s early 1730s I
6:51think he turns to build the flute player
6:54and the drummer and above all this duck
6:57mainly for cash and to show that he's a
7:00virtuoso and of course it works
7:02triumphantly because he is a
7:04virtuoso for all the real skill involved
7:07in its making the duck and other
7:09autometer were to remain in the world of
7:12entertainment they won their inventor
7:14celebrity and the courts and salar of
7:1618th century Europe but they were not
7:19the direct ancestors of the
7:22[Music]
7:23rocket so I think if you're trying to
7:26explain what's special in any way about
7:29about the English situation just before
7:32the great automation of the second half
7:34of the 18th century it's not a very good
7:36idea to look at Superior English Artisan
7:41skill or the presence of more Engineers
7:44or something like that I don't think
7:45that's the that's the
7:48key Jac devan's work with Mechanical
7:51Animals was to involve him in an early
7:54attempt to industrialize France it
7:57happened when the King made him head of
8:00French silk
8:02production he threw himself into the
8:04work and came up with a plan to
8:06reorganize the industry on Factory
8:11lines the factory that Vasan planned was
8:14going to be a control freaks
8:18Heaven he would decide exactly where
8:20they would work where they would live
8:23and how much they were paid he would
8:25decide how much the woven silk should be
8:27sold for and who it would be sold
8:30to best of all the whole project had the
8:34authority of the king himself it
8:36couldn't
8:39fail Vasan invited the Weavers and
8:42Merchants of leyon to come and see his
8:45[Music]
8:47plans they didn't like it at
8:51all Weavers didn't like it and neither
8:54did the
8:56merchants after thinking about it for a
8:59while while the people of Leon rioted
9:01for 3
9:02days banson has to get out of town in a
9:05hurry he manages to escape at night
9:08dressed as a monk his Mill is burnt down
9:12his his machines are broken States state
9:15support is withdrawn towards the end of
9:18his life 1760s 1770s he sets up a few
9:22silk factories down in the south of
9:24France in the area of of ardesh on in
9:29lightened rational lines as he sees it
9:32with machines that that are obviously
9:33going to throw lots of people out of
9:35work and make silk in relatively large
9:37quantities what you see is a rational
9:40planned absolutely sensible and in the
9:43end rather ineffective system of
9:46Automation and Industrial change the
9:49presumption in Britain is first and
9:51foremost that an innovation is supposed
9:54to make money it's supposed to be
9:56commercialized in France nobody's averse
10:00to money any in any society that I know
10:02of but in France Innovations are first
10:05and foremost supposed to serve the state
10:09they are geared toward the military and
10:12what's not useful to the military can be
10:14used to
10:15entertain particularly the upper class
10:18there you have Simon duck again and so
10:20on in Britain it's supposed first and
10:22foremost to make money the social
10:25structure within which Innovations occur
10:27is absolutely essential the Great
10:29difference seems to be most Continental
10:31countries have very stratified um
10:35systems whereby most of these
10:37Innovations occur at the top and most of
10:40the work remains there doesn't spread
10:42out
10:44sideways in fact real effective
10:47industrial change was already happening
10:49back in
10:51England not by Royal Decree but because
10:54of a lucky combination of
10:57circumstances there was a Val in
10:59shopshire where Cole and Anon happened
11:01to lie side by side under the
11:04ground that's how C Brookdale got its
11:06name and it was there that Abraham Derby
11:09moved during the reign of Queen
11:12Anne Abraham Derby made an pots for a
11:15living he hadn't been appointed by the
11:18government he was a member of the
11:20radical religious sect sometimes known
11:23as the Quakers that is why there are no
11:25pictures of Abraham
11:27Derby he and his friends believe the
11:30portraits were part of the vanity of the
11:32material world which is ironic because
11:35what he did do was to put Britain on the
11:38road to being the first industrial
11:40consumer
11:42[Music]
11:45Society Abraham Derby developed a simple
11:49trick he started to melt his iron using
11:52Coke instead of
11:54coal Coke is coal which has been
11:57specially treated the Imperial ities
11:59have been slowly burned
12:01out the result is that coke Burns hotter
12:05and a hotter furnace produces more
12:07molten
12:09[Music]
12:11iron Darby had come to cookdale to visit
12:14his Quaker relatives who were in The
12:16Brass
12:17business they already used Coke to fire
12:20their
12:22furnaces Darby converted one of their
12:25furnaces to melt the an for his
12:27pots and that is how it started with
12:31people making a lot of very simple
12:32things out of
12:34ir it didn't involve clever machines or
12:37even organized
12:40factories what was happening here was
12:42Mucky simple-minded and
12:47repetitive Darby's New Coke furnaces
12:50could produce molten iron to make enough
12:52pots for everybody in
12:54England anything at all could be made
12:57simply and in quantity
13:00arm became the plastic of the
13:03[Music]
13:06age but what came first were Abraham
13:09Derby's iron
13:12pots where once a village Craftsman had
13:15made a couple of pots a year Darby's
13:18Foundry was now producing
13:22[Music]
13:24thousands he became so rich he bought
13:27the valley of cob
13:29but more importantly he had taken the
13:31first step on Britain's road to the
13:33consumer
13:36world every manufactured object anything
13:40turned out in bulk in a factory anything
13:43made repetitively and sold in quantity
13:46every consumer object has its origins in
13:49part with the good Quaker of C
13:54Brookdale the process which Abraham
13:56Derby had started now began to take off
13:59a decade after his first experiments
14:02with Coke smelting 120 new iron
14:05foundaries were supplying 90% of
14:07Britain's iron people began to realize
14:11that industrialization also makes deep
14:14changes to
14:20society as far as the eye could see the
14:23country was blackened by
14:27smoke a dense pestilential Cloud hangs
14:31over it blackening even the grain that
14:33grows upon
14:34[Music]
14:36it I thought of the price we had to pay
14:39for our vaunted Supremacy in the
14:41manufacturer of
14:42[Music]
14:45iron but oh how wretched The Mortals
14:48that grind out their Destiny
14:53there at night the whole region burns
14:57like a volcano spitting fire from a
14:59thousand tubes of
15:03brick it may be fanciful but when you
15:07look at these black wind buildings and
15:09you look at the smoke coming out of the
15:10roof and you think of the black Iron and
15:12you think of the black coal you suddenly
15:15begin to see why this is called Black
15:17Country why there are black sources here
15:20why the costume of the victorians became
15:24black their funerals were black their
15:26top hats were black everything became in
15:32[Music]
15:37[Music]
15:39black coal and iron and people who knew
15:42how to use them these things combined
15:45with the public eager to buy the new
15:47manufactured consumer
15:49[Music]
15:51goods by the 1750s there were plenty of
15:54entrepreneurs ready to exploit that
15:56unique combination of circumstances
15:59in a way that would change the
16:01[Music]
16:05world the consumer Revolution took off
16:08in Britain in the
16:101750s what had started with ironware
16:13very soon spread into
16:16chinaware the desire for China
16:19exploded once it had been a luxury of
16:22the super rich imported from halfway
16:24across the
16:25world now it became the backbone of
16:28British
16:29manufacturing but again the question is
16:32why Britain the key Innovation was
16:35learning how to make porin the hard
16:38white china whose recipe was a closely
16:40guarded secret of the
16:43Chinese that problem had been sold 30
16:45years earlier in Germany in the city of
16:50M this was the place where we see the
16:53first European production of porcelain
16:56and the Europeans had been searching for
17:00the way the way to make porcelain for
17:03centuries the problem had been solved at
17:06about the same time as Abraham Darby was
17:09starting to smelt his
17:11iron the discovery was made by a man who
17:14spent almost all of his life as a
17:17prisoner Johan butger in his youth had
17:20claimed he was able to transmute base
17:22Metals into
17:24gold when Rising politician Augustus the
17:28strong heard about that he was delighted
17:31he abducted buter immediately locked him
17:34up and set him to
17:37work wer was a talented and intelligent
17:40experimenter but even so the transmuting
17:43aspect of his work didn't make much
17:46[Music]
17:49progress Augustus became angry and in
17:52order to save his own life buter started
17:55on a much more successful sideline
18:00he discovered how to make
18:02porcelain this wasn't gold but it was
18:04nearly as
18:09good porcelain was desired as a status
18:12object by royalty all over Europe but
18:15only the Chinese knew how to make it and
18:18they charged top prices payable in
18:20silver only the porcelain Factory at M
18:24soon became world famous but this wasn't
18:27mass production
18:30uction a single M figure was built
18:33assembled and finished from hundreds of
18:37pieces Craftsmen might work on it for
18:40months far from undercutting the Chinese
18:43one figure could cost as much as a
18:46thousand imported Chinese
18:49plates these model figurines that M
18:52became very famous for they replaced um
18:56the figurines made in Sugar that it were
18:58used to decorate the dessert tables of
19:01the great
19:03Banquets for all the success of its
19:05porcelain the area around M did not see
19:08the rapid growth that happened in the
19:10British
19:11Midlands a m figure was too expensive
19:14for almost anybody but royalty to
19:19buy it was sold at extremely high prices
19:22it was a rarity it was a high luxury
19:24good and it never moved beyond
19:27that
19:28in England the situation was very
19:31different Josiah Wedgewood set out to do
19:34for China what Abraham Darby had done
19:36for
19:39iron Wedgewood lived in the emerging
19:42Midlands where he could develop his
19:43Factory techniques unhampered by the
19:46guilds and established
19:51practices but what fueled wedgewood's
19:54contribution to the Industrial
19:55Revolution wasn't manufacturer it was
19:58the creation of
20:01Desire Wedgewood was able to understand
20:04that luxuries weren't just for the rich
20:07luxuries were for the
20:13people it is absolutely necessary to
20:16show our various table and dessert
20:18Services these articles must every few
20:21days be so altered reversed and
20:23transformed as to render the whole a new
20:27scene he made China for royalty but then
20:31he used his flare for
20:33marketing he produced affordable
20:36imitations stacked him high and sold him
20:38relatively
20:40cheaply it is really amazing how rapidly
20:44the use of this cream color Alias Queens
20:47wear has spread almost over the whole
20:50globe and how universally it is
20:57liked Wedgewood offered free delivery
21:00free replacement of breakages and a
21:02money back guarantee if not
21:05satisfied not far from M there is a
21:08house which is a monument to wedgewood's
21:11ability in 1770 Prince Leopold Friedrich
21:15France filled it entirely with Wedgewood
21:17China that he had bought by mail
21:23order why did he collect all this
21:25Wedgewood and not my which is surely
21:29only 100 miles down the road m p Lane
21:33stand for an old time so was old
21:36fashioned by this old fashion and M
21:38produced yeah I think it is so only for
21:41the qus why didn't M change its style H
21:45they cannot they produce in this
21:47portselan only yes and uh sell the
21:50portselan to the courts and not to the
21:53middle class yes yes wetwood was clever
21:58use for the upper class also and for the
22:00middle class it's I think it's modern
22:02thinking of a Potter and the the some
22:07persons in the 18th century mean that
22:10Wedgewood was a better Merchant than a
22:14[Music]
22:18Potter the British became really good at
22:22making wonderful modern imitations of
22:25European and Oriental luxuries and
22:28actually of course we have seen um other
22:30countries do that in this Century if you
22:32look at Japan for instance the story
22:35you've told putting other Goods in the
22:37place of wedgewood's products would
22:40actually have suited Japan very well
22:41indeed so this is a strategy that
22:44countries that perceived themselves at
22:45first to be almost economically marginal
22:48in the world context move themselves to
22:50the center of a World Market Britain
22:53succeeded in doing that the best example
22:56perhaps of all of this is the Cotton
22:58industry which becomes the pivotal
23:00industry of the Industrial
23:02[Music]
23:05Revolution cotton dresses made from
23:07fabric exported from India had taken the
23:10World by
23:11storm these Fabrics were as popular in
23:14Istanbul as they were in
23:17barnesley the village Weavers in India
23:20stepped up production until they could
23:22be made so cheaply that Ordinary People
23:24could afford several
23:26dresses
23:33the trouble was that they became so
23:36popular that the makers of Woolen
23:38garments managed to get a law introduced
23:40Banning
23:40[Music]
23:43them it became obvious to some British
23:46manufacturers that they could cash
23:48in they knew from the performance of
23:51Indian cotton that there was a
23:52ready-made
23:54Market eventually the band was lifted
24:02now there was only one thing holding it
24:06back turning cotton or wool into thread
24:10by twisting it on a spindle had been the
24:13traditional activity of The Virtuous
24:15domesticated woman since before the
24:17ancient
24:20Greeks it was the power of
24:22entrepreneurial opportunity that changed
24:24all
24:25that one woman how however virtuous can
24:29only make so much thread on one
24:33spindle James har gaves reasoned that
24:36productivity could be increased by
24:38putting several spindles
24:40together the importance of the machine
24:43he had invented the spinning jenny was
24:45so quickly recognized that its export
24:48was immediately
24:51banned in the 1780s Hargreaves managed
24:54to set up a factory of 10 machines with
24:5610 spindles each
24:58but this didn't happen without a
24:59struggle har geves had to flee and
25:03eventually gets adopted by knitting
25:06manufacturers in Nottingham where he has
25:09to be protected in what was called a
25:11factory safe the windows were all
25:13blocked up on the lower floors and um he
25:16was virtually a prisoner in these um
25:19these large scale workshops which were a
25:22an early former
25:24Factory the idea of a machine that spins
25:26thread was taken up by Richard
25:29arcrite he was an aggressive
25:31entrepreneur who saw the huge potential
25:33of factories and wasn't going to let
25:35anyone stand in his way he got his hands
25:38on a patent for a water-powered spinning
25:41machine and set up in
25:43business in 1773 his first factory was
25:47employing 600 people most of them
25:51children whenever he came up against
25:53resistance which like fansan and Har
25:56Greaves he did he just moved his
25:58operation to a less militant
26:01area he would only Grant patent licenses
26:04to those who were going to set up on a
26:06factory scale the individual spinner was
26:09now out of the
26:13picture this was the beginning of the
26:15age of the
26:18factory many followed arite Wedgewood
26:21himself soon started mass producing
26:26China
26:32[Music]
26:50but why was it possible for this to
26:52happen in Britain and not in
26:54France people have been searching for
26:56the cause of the Industrial Revolution
26:58in England for a very long time and many
27:01people have despaired of finding it and
27:03they've always said there is this X
27:04Factor this special Factor now none of
27:07us believe that the British were in any
27:09way Superior in intelligence or in any
27:12other respect perhaps however there's
27:15something special about the way their
27:17society is
27:19organized I think there is one aspect of
27:22British life that may help to explain
27:25it and possibly this XX factor is a
27:30peculiar English
27:31invention the English
27:34Club Now what could be the relationship
27:37between a club and an industrial
27:39revolution what is the link between
27:42them these clubs solved a problem which
27:45you have when you're trying to construct
27:47an industrial revolution so to speak
27:51what you really need therefore is to try
27:54and get a balance between two human
27:56Tendencies one is is to be very
27:59individualistic to lock yourself up into
28:01your private world to read to think and
28:04to develop new new ideas the other is to
28:07be very friendly and cooperative and
28:09collaborative now if you spend your
28:11whole time drinking and chatting to
28:13people you won't get anywhere if you
28:14spend your whole time in as an
28:17individual locked up in your own world
28:19you won't get anywhere so the club
28:22provided the ideal place where you could
28:23combine these two things you could
28:26combine them because you had an excuse
28:29to combine them and you'd sit around
28:32relax and talk every evening to your
28:34friends now this would mean that people
28:38who normally would never
28:39meet
28:41businessmen Craftsmen academics all
28:45these people who lived in separate
28:46worlds could come together and join in
28:51conversation without it I cannot see how
28:54you could have had either a scientific
28:56or an an industrial revolution on this
28:59funny little
29:02island in France on the other hand clubs
29:05were seen as a threat to the
29:08state a place where people gathered to
29:10talk might be a place where they plotted
29:12against the
29:14king just before the Revolution a French
29:17Aristocrat who visited London got a
29:19shock when he went for a walk in St
29:21James's
29:24park it is a strange sight to see the
29:27flower of the nobility mingling in
29:30confusion with the viest
29:33populace such is the taste of the
29:36English it is part of what they call
29:38their
29:41Liberty every man has the right to
29:44discuss freely the king himself is not
29:47safe from
29:49censia I'm sure there's a lot to be
29:52gained with all this discussions that's
29:53taking place um you can't tell me that
29:56the people people who were actually
29:58working the machines and working on the
30:01technology were a member of any of those
30:04clubs the The Artisans the the people
30:07with the technical skills were not Parts
30:11part of these groups people who
30:13designing the machines W James Watt
30:16Matthew Bolton Wedgewood they were all
30:18members of the lunar Society for example
30:21and true so they were designing the
30:23machines but admittedly the person who
30:24the poor person who was sweating on the
30:26machine certainly wouldn't a member of I
30:28agree with but um no my point is not
30:31that they were just um the these aren't
30:33just Factory fodder just sort of being
30:35told what they what to do many of these
30:38people were actually in the process of
30:40developing the technology itself if we
30:43think about you know polite St James's
30:46West End Club land alone we would make
30:50the mistake that you rightly point to
30:52but if we extend that to understand a
30:54wider form of sociability amongst all
30:56our design
30:57I think that that story's actually got a
31:00lot going for it what is really
31:02interesting is just how quickly those um
31:05networks of knowledge spread absolutely
31:08that someone like Bolton or Wedgewood or
31:10whatever they knew exactly who was the
31:13guy who was the best person at um
31:15guilding this little little piece or who
31:18could make this this uh this precise
31:20piece of instrument and they would send
31:22their things all over the
31:26country
31:27the network of entrepreneurs and
31:29inventors was a unique feature of
31:32British
31:32[Music]
31:39Society but one more idea was needed to
31:42take Britain into the era of the rocket
31:46and it actually was made by a group of
31:48people sitting and talking in a
31:52club the right combination of things
31:55made the Industrial Revolution start the
31:57will to make money a population eager
32:00and able to buy factorymade Goods by the
32:041780s there had already been huge
32:08changes there were 50 cotton Mills in
32:10the Manchester area but that was nothing
32:1440 years later there were
32:18800 what extra element had been added to
32:21cause the final explosion of the
32:23Industrial
32:25Revolution good way of getting at the
32:27puzzle is to think about um the the
32:30kinds of devices that were being built
32:32at this time and what they were used for
32:36the reason why these things became so
32:39popular they were shown at fairs but
32:41they were also shown to the king they
32:43made vona a lot of money and eventually
32:46he sold out his models to a clever team
32:49of English entrepreneurs who put them on
32:51show at the theater Royal in the Hay
32:53Market the reason why they were so
32:55popular was I think cuz they they
32:57capture a fundamental element of what's
33:00happening in early 18th century
33:02Northwestern Europe which is the idea
33:04that
33:06machines can be thought of in roughly
33:09the same way as we think of living
33:12beings and that living beings can be
33:14thought of in roughly the same way as we
33:16think of
33:18machines 30 years after the duck in the
33:221780s Europe was astounded by a touring
33:25exhibition of a lifesize
33:28automatan it was claimed that it was a
33:30machine that could play
33:33chess It produced in its 18th century
33:36audience a mixture of contempt fear and
33:41admiration it seems to be a thing
33:43absolutely impossible that any mechanism
33:47should exert the intelligence of a
33:49reasoning
33:55agent
34:05[Music]
34:25a
34:29[Music]
34:40fashionable Society was ready to believe
34:42that it was looking at a thinking
34:44machine but in fact there was a man
34:47inside pulling the
34:53[Music]
34:55strings
34:59[Music]
35:02it would be two decades before the truth
35:04was uncovered but by then the myth of
35:07the chess player was to make its own
35:09special
35:11contribution it happens in
35:141784 in a club where Edmund cartright a
35:18clergyman poet from Oxford finds himself
35:21having dinner with some of the new
35:24industrialists the entrepreneurs are
35:26trying to deal with a
35:28problem it's now so easy to spin thread
35:31in quantity that their warehouses are
35:34filling up with it there is so much of
35:36it that it's being dumped abroad at
35:38knockdown
35:41prices the problem is at the weaving
35:46stage spinning was easy to mechanize but
35:49they don't see how the same thing can be
35:51done for
35:52weaving it's complicated and it seems to
35:55require human judment
35:57[Applause]
36:00ement but Edmund cartright has just
36:02heard about the chess
36:03[Applause]
36:05player with the confidence that only
36:07comes from real ignorance he announces
36:10that if a machine can be made to play
36:13chess it can certainly be made to weave
36:15Cloth
36:172
36:193
36:20[Music]
36:244 what's remarkable about this machine
36:28is its extraordinary Ingenuity in
36:30turning each and every component of the
36:34weaving process into something that a
36:37mechanical device can
36:39do human capacities a
36:43systematically remodeled and replaced by
36:47Machinery example if you look at this
36:49moving arm here it's called a picking
36:52stick what it's doing precisely is
36:56mechanizing in one of the most skilled
36:59jobs of the whole cotton process which
37:03is to pick cotton thread as it moves
37:07backwards and forwards along the shule
37:11so what's the connection between
37:13machines like this and other autometer
37:17well it seems to me that what we see
37:20here is the almost complete automation
37:25of human capacity
37:28the machine often goes wrong though the
37:31thread breaks unless it's kept damp it
37:33needs a lot of Maintenance and care and
37:36I think there's the key to the problems
37:40and opportunities of mechanization in
37:43the industrial
37:45revolution you've worked on machines
37:47like this what's your experience of
37:49tending a number of machines when you
37:51get a set of 10 of these to keep them
37:54going all day so it was one man like
37:57yourself looking after 10 10 oh women
38:00it's slowly we Sur they come more women
38:01than men on Wave inside but there were
38:04skill in it you can't just put any Tom
38:06they can are on these lo as they going
38:08to get something trapped
38:11right this m would run on water right so
38:14of course if you had a decrease in water
38:17flow your loons would run slightly
38:20slower so that was a seasonal that was a
38:22seasonal thing and then that meant the
38:24workers had to work longer
38:27for the first fortnite when you went
38:28show The Mill at night people sounded as
38:31though they were talking from a long
38:33long way away as though they were
38:34Whispering yeah and then after fortnite
38:36it as though your ears were beginning to
38:39then you all right but what you don't
38:40realize is slowly but surely going going
38:43yeah and I know we're heing it because
38:46when I'm watching CH I can't see
38:50it when you first start it mil the old
38:53blocks have come down and say watch out
38:55for the old spinsters when you L over at
38:57Loom and I'll still have
39:00you 1
39:06[Music]
39:072 a large number of people working with
39:10machines were now going to be understood
39:12as though they were
39:14machines
39:171
39:211 the automatan became a way of
39:24representing how humans worked
39:27in France and in Britain especially in
39:30the industrial areas the human body is
39:33increasingly understood as a type of
39:36machine and the labor force is
39:38increasingly understood as Automotive
39:41discipline functioning like
39:44[Music]
39:46clockwork 1
39:512 now with the addition of automation
39:54the age of the factory really did did
39:56take
39:57off by 1815 there were upwards of 3,000
40:02power looms operating in Manchester
40:04alone the new cities sucked population
40:07into
40:10[Music]
40:12them but what did this do to the Weavers
40:15whose colleagues in Leon had rioted a
40:17lifetime
40:20Ago by far the greatest number of
40:22Weavers were employed in cotton and they
40:26were the ones that took the brunt of
40:28this first really major technological
40:30transformation that changed the lives of
40:33a whole demestic
40:37Workforce we can see that there were
40:39over 250,000 handloom Weavers working in
40:41the cotton industry within 20 years
40:44their numbers were reduced to less than
40:4750,000 and they too disappeared in the
40:51next 10
40:52years there was very good reason for
40:55this lism we all hear about and the
40:59resistance to Machinery at the
41:02time the mechanization of weaving was a
41:06a source of enormous public debate in
41:08the early 19th century though there were
41:10calls for attacks on Machinery though
41:12there were calls for a minimum wage
41:15though there were calls for providing
41:17some form of an early form of
41:19unemployment um compensation nothing was
41:23ever done to provide this and it does
41:25seem that they there was enough
41:27confidence in the power of the state to
41:30contain social protests at the
41:36time across the channel in the France of
41:38Louis the 16th things had not been quite
41:41so well
41:45controlled such enormous power
41:47constantly acting and from which no man
41:50was free must in the nature of things
41:54degenerate into absolute tyranny
41:58in a society that actively discourages
42:00interaction between the classes
42:02resentment is liable to build up
42:04unnoticed as Arthur Young found out when
42:07he visited France in the months before
42:09the
42:10[Music]
42:13Revolution the abuses were heavy and
42:16Universal what must have been the state
42:19of the poor people paying heavy taxes
42:21from which the nobility and clergy were
42:24Exempted with hindsight it should have
42:27been obvious that the people who had
42:29resisted M deon's factory were likely to
42:31take matters into their own
42:37hands the French Revolution shook the
42:39world in
42:411789 it gave way to the Empire of
42:44Napoleon
42:46bonapart should be born in mind that
42:48this a hay day of the Industrial
42:50Revolution coincide with what's known as
42:53in Britain as the French and Napoleonic
42:55Wars which cost Britain an enormous
42:57amount of money even though there was no
43:00direct fighting on British soil but the
43:03British national debt went to you
43:05multiplied by a factor of something like
43:06a 100 during during these wars we had
43:09income tax ever since and no no not
43:12quite it was it was immediately
43:13abolished after the war and then and
43:16then brought back in 1856 but if you're
43:18looking at Britain compared to the
43:20European continent where not only they
43:22had to pay taxes but they also had
43:24fighting on their soil and
43:26that it probably increased the Gap even
43:28so it slowed both of them down I mean
43:31could couldn't you also turn the
43:33argument around and say the the capacity
43:35of Britain to beat Napoleon depends on
43:38the strength of its
43:40economy Napoleon tried to put squeeze on
43:43Britain's vital trade the country could
43:46use its economic power to ride out the
43:49blockade but only if it could keep its
43:52trade routes open the success of the
43:55Navy became all
43:57important the eventual Naval victory
44:00over the French at Trafalga remains in
44:02the National Consciousness to this
44:05day the British victory in the
44:07Napoleonic War I think owed less to the
44:09Bulldog spirit and far more to
44:11technology and taxes the extraordinarily
44:15efficient British tax system which
44:17relied on the knowledge of the whole
44:19British economy meant that the British
44:22government could raise vast quantities
44:23of cash both to pay foreign armies and
44:26also to build its own War Machine and
44:29the technology which counted was Naval
44:32technology the government set up a
44:34committee of philosophers and scientists
44:37to streamline the naval dockyards at
44:40Portsmouth they turned it into the
44:43largest Factory in the
44:45world in 1799 the need to produce
44:49standardized parts for Naval repairs
44:52gave rise to the world's first
44:53production line
44:56instead of a 100 skilled workmen 10
45:00relatively unskilled laborers working at
45:03almost 50 different specific machines
45:06could produce on a mass scale hundreds
45:09of thousands of objects like these
45:12wooden pulley blocks on which the
45:14navigability of Admiral Nelson's Fleet
45:17relied wood cutting was the key
45:19technique of the new engineering system
45:22and instead of the old pits which used
45:26the labor of two very strong very
45:28skillful men they had a steam engine
45:32whose power would be delivered
45:33throughout the works by these belts this
45:36one turns a big circular soore against
45:40this great log of wood it's lignum vti
45:43the Wood of Life imported to Portsmouth
45:45from Central America or the West Indies
45:48an extraordinarily hard and reliable
45:50wood but hard to to cut purely by hand
45:54the problem with it was that because of
45:56the unevenness of hardness it would
45:58easily deform from a perfect circle into
46:01some kind of ellipse instead here you
46:04could turn the log directly against the
46:08circular sore producing these
46:10beautifully engineered extremely precise
46:13blocks with A fine grain great hardness
46:18and durability Precision Engineering
46:21with replaceable parts that was the key
46:24to the success of the Portsmouth
46:26system the great victory at Trafalga in
46:301805 depended explicitly on the
46:33application of industrial principles to
46:36mechanize Naval
46:40Warfare so when Napoleon called the
46:42English a nation of shopkeepers he was
46:45actually pointing to a reason for his
46:47own
46:48defeat it was the new British consumer
46:51society that allowed her to keep
46:53fighting through the French economic
46:55sanctions
46:57[Music]
47:07the rocket made its Journey only 15
47:09years after the defeat of Napoleon at
47:15waterl the consumer Society was now
47:18poised to spread so successfully that
47:20one day the same hamburgers and the same
47:23trainers would be available in every
47:25city on the
47:27planet the world had taken
47:32off on the 100-year time scale the
47:35Industrial Revolution is a story of
47:37machines clubs and
47:40factories but there is a further puzzle
47:42if we go back 250 years to find out what
47:46led to
47:47this one more element was needed to make
47:50it all happen the very global trade
47:53Network that Napoleon had tried to
48:01destroy why did the growth of
48:03exploration and the opening of trade
48:05routes affect the Industrial
48:07Revolution and how did northern Europe
48:10and Britain in particular managed to
48:12come to rule the
48:19[Music]
48:24waves
48:26[Music]
49:03[Music]
49:07oh