1757- East of the Cape of Good Hope

by Narendra Mehra

  In 1698, a fifty-year-old man by the name of Thomas Savery (1650-1715) suddenly appeared on the scene, he was more of a quack and he had no association with the coalmines. He was from a well-known family of Devonshire, England and he applied for a patent ‘for raising water by the impellent force of fire, which will be of great use for drying mines’. Later, he described the devise as an engine to raise water. Though he called his contraption an engine, it had nothing that qualified it to be called an engine. It had no moving parts or pistons it was just a vessel, in which steam was added, and water was heated, then the vessel was cooled to condense the steam, creating some vacuum and a little lift into a downpipe, which was connected to the vessel. Savery did not understand the concept of his patent. He continued to use an awful lot of steam in direct contact with cold water to create the vacuum with little success. Savery had no clear idea whether his ‘engine’ was a pressure vessel, which could lift water to any height or a vacuum producing equipment which could lift water to a maximum height of about thirty feet. Apparently, Savery had no idea of the scientific principal behind his patent, which was essentially meaningless as he had no sketch or description of the scientific principle involved. Savery later joined Thomas Newcomen, ironmonger and black smith of Dartmouth, who improved upon the same idea, by providing a separate condenser, thereby improving the efficiency of the operation. He obtained a patent in 1705 to convert steam energy to work. Both those men were essentially lifting water out of the mine by utilizing the physical laws of nature that they did not understand. The low-pressure saturated steam that they used did not have much capacity for work and was of little practical use.

  The story gets more bizarre and interesting as it is explored further. It is bizarre because the sketch of the equipment that Newcomen and Savery provided resembled what they used in India to make’arrak’, a popular distillate of fennel in water, which was a common remedy for stomach ailments. In The Babar –Nama, (Memoirs of Babur), published by AMS Press New York, 1922 an incident is described which occurred during his conquests in India in 1527. Babur was stricken by food poisoning or there was an attempt on his life and Babur drank ‘arrack’ as an antidote. Arrack is made in India even today. It essentially involves a still, in which water and fennel or other ingredients are boiled and the vapors are condensed in a separate condenser and the distillate collected in another container. Creating vacuum, by using the external condenser emptied the content of the still. The use of steam and the technology of producing vacuum by condensing steam were well known in India. It was probable that the idea and the technology came from India though it was poorly applied in the British coal Mines. Patent legislation was unique to Britain; the basis was the Statute of Monopolies of 1624, it was unheard of in India.

  This craft of producing vacuum by condensing steam was an essential process in the manufacture of ‘arrack. And the British East India Company (EIC) used to issue licenses to produce ‘arrack’ after they were able to establish their hegemony. Did the British bring that technology from India, and did not acknowledge the basis of Thomas Savery and Thomas Newcomer’s work? Savery came from a well known family, and it was reasonable to speculate that somehow his family was connected with the East India Company, where they saw the technology. The popular image of British technology, using coal and steam was portrayed as a historical myth, an iconic myth of heroic proportions and began to be used in England’s national debate. A collective nostalgia or delusion was created that by virtue of the technical achievement, Britain was able to bring home other people’s money and which also became the basis of Britain’s glorious past. It even entered into Britain’s political debate and probably elected Margaret Thatcher as a part of that nostalgia to revive the past.

  If England was technically proficient; it could have used other technologies to solve a century old problem of water in the coal mines. They could have used siphons, steam ejectors, wind power, bucket elevators, Persian wheels using animal power and some of those technologies used the same scientific principals as of producing vacuum by condensing steam. If indeed they were at the cutting edge of technology, in comparison to other economies, they could have devised some solution, to solve the problem of water in the mines, rather than living with it for about a hundred years. There was no evidence that England had any special reservoir of special talent except their pursuit of money by any method fair or foul. How those two men working in coal mines with little knowledge of natural science or physical science got the idea of condensing steam to lift water out of the coal mine? It was a baffling question and the British participated in trumpeting the glory.

  Watt obtained the first patent for a separate condenser in 1769, seventy years later, and the first commercial application appeared in 1776. A separate condenser saved steam and made the ‘fire engine’ more efficient as initial attempts to condensing steam in direct contact with cold water was fool hardy. A few more refinements brought the use of steam to drive a piston, (the clearances between the cylinder and the piston were plugged using ropes and twine) helped the concept towards a steam driven locomotive. The sun and planet gear converted the reciprocating motion to a rotary motion and an eccentric sheave linked the reciprocating piston to the locomotive wheel, to propel the wheels of a locomotive forward. In England, they however persisted in using low-pressure steam and did not understand the thermodynamics of the process. It was for the French mathematician, Sadi Carnot (1796-1832), alumni of Ecole Polytechnique, who postulated the scientific basis for the heat engine and put the theoretical concepts behind the invention, to convert thermal power to work. That formed the basis of using high-pressure steam to convert thermal energy to work. It was not until 1804, that Arthur Wolf introduced a commercially successful engine, using high-pressure steam and a separate condenser. It was not until the nineteenth century, that the various concepts and incremental improvements like metalworking brought the efforts to fruition. Many countries, many individuals contributed to this advance, English craftsmen only practiced and implemented the technique.

  It only shows that Britain was divorced from any study or development of natural science and there was no one who understood the problem or came up with a solution. When there was such a high vacuum of talent and knowledge, how could they produce any meaningful ‘industrial revolution’ which involved many branches of science and technology? The steam locomotive was still further away. That honor went to George Stephenson (1781-1848), who was the first to demonstrate successfully the use of steam locomotive for haulage of goods and passenger traffic. Stephenson’s locomotive continued in regular operation at Killingworth colliery. The first commercial train ran between Stockton and Darlington in 1825 under the supervision of its famous inventor, George Stephenson. It was not a swift, drastic change that made a lot of money for England. The money came from dumping railroad locomotives in India, the steel rail lines and other infrastructure including the English manpower that traveled to India, at India’s expense. Britain also used Indian manpower to build railroad in Kenya. The money from the colonies produced the bankers, men of commerce, who provided the liquidity and acted as the midwife of industrial growth. The goods produced in Britain were dumped in the colonies, especially in India; it became a depot for the British manufactured goods. The steam engine also helped bring in tropical raw materials from India, tea, jute, cotton, coffee and minerals like mica and coal, producing an unprecedented inflow of capital in to England.

  During the nineteenth century, India had no control over its destiny and it was being exploited to the fullest. When the railway engine appeared on the scene in 1829, India made efforts to build its own railroad, but was prevented (see Jewel in the Crown). The railroad was dumped on India at exorbitant cost, India was in an ideal position to build its own steel mills and railroad; it had all the materials, coal, iron ore, lime in the immediate vicinity of Raniganj coalfields. India went on to build an iron and steel mill at Durgapur, immediately after the end of the British colonial rule.


  On account of the successes with the steam engine technology, the British coal industry went through a sky rocketing increase in demand and a cheap source of coal became necessary both for the railroad as well as for the steel industry. To make that point clear, around the beginning of the nineteenth century, England used about ten million tons of coal a year, but by 1865, the use of coal jumped to about 100 million tons and most of that coal was going to meet the demands of the railroad. Both railways and steam ships were contributing to the increased need for coal. Coal / steam combination added to the explosive growth in coal production and the question arose whether steam/coal combination made the Industrial revolution? Coal was a substitute for power and any sort of available resource could satisfy that demand for power. England was rich in coal, so it tapped the coal seams. Countries rich in hydraulic power, wind power, did the same much earlier. Steam was just a prime mover. Industry, technology and other investments were necessary to harness the steam power. It was therefore appropriate to review other technologies of that period and examine the contributions, if any; it made to the creation of wealth for England.

  Iron and Steel

  People in many countries knew how to make iron, steel and its alloys. India had a six-ton iron pillar made of 99.75 percent wrought iron, bearing an inscription credited to the 4th century AD. It is erected outside the Kutab Minar at Delhi. There were also, shields, swords and many metal implements. In Britain therefore, the discovery of iron and steel was not the issue then, rather it was the advances in ore smelting, refining and production of the metal in larger quantities. In other words, Britain was looking for ways to make larger and larger quantities of iron and steel in some form of a semi-continuous operation resembling what may be described as a change over to factory manufacture instead of a cottage industry operation. The process of making the metal was already well known, they were simply looking for improvements in the technique to make larger quantities that could be made cheaply.

  Because of the availability of rail transportation, steam ships and steam engines, there was suddenly a larger demand for cheaper metal. Iron and steel also became a replacement in many applications for wind, water and animal power. The metallurgy of most metals followed a similar path in smelting the raw ore, which was mined and occurred naturally. The conversion of the ore to metal required mixing it with things like coke and lime to get rid of the impurities, which was separated as slag and the metal, was tapped as castings. In iron industry, those castings typically called pig iron were quite brittle and required further processing to impart it the strength of steel. In ancient times, the wood charcoal was the reducing agent of choice, as it had fewer impurities, batches were small and made in cottage industries and the smiths had greater control on the batch processes.

  Britain ran out of its woods possibly because of the ship building activity and could not meet the demand for charcoal. So, the need arose for alternate technologies, based on coal, rather than charcoal. That problem was unique to Britain however and they tried to get rid of the impurities in coal by subjecting it to the coking operation, essentially burning coal without air. The product so formed was called coke and produced coal tar and gases as bye-products. The forgers, the smiths and the chemists in England, therefore had the challenge of developing a proper mix for the reducing operation so that they could operate the iron and steel mills with mix of coke instead of coal

  It was questionable that any of the above technologies that they developed could be put in the category of break through technologies; ushering in a new economic order. There were many examples in many industries of the need for constant change, where problem solving of technical issues were part of the essential skill set and it never qualified to be categorized as ushering in a new economic order. There was nothing unique in solving problems of the British iron and steel industry for the purpose of growth. It was just a routine problem common to all industries. Could one classify the incremental changes in technology as an industrial revolution? If we accept the changes in British iron and steel industry as industrial revolution, then the terminology can be applied to every innovation, every change in every industry every where in the world. Britain claimed that it was the Industrial Revolution that marked the genesis of industrial civilization and thus prepared the way for the eventual industrialization of the world. What a hyperbole, hope Britain does not want the world to take her literally. All that Britain did in the iron and steel industry was to learn to make mixes of iron ore, coal and lime for a semi automatic operation, and supplied air to the furnace using steam engine instead of leather bellows powered by water wheal. Does it sound significant? Hardly. Britain made things tough for itself. Its people, who were tinkering with those changes, did not have the background in chemistry, metallurgy or any scientific learning and the slightest improvement made them feel as if they have invented something unique meriting a Noble prize.

  Those people were just mill hands; smiths, millwrights, furnace masters and they were trying to satisfy the demand for metal for the steam ships and the railroads. Their owners were merchants, who were trading in India. They needed steam ships and steam engines. They saw the opportunity to dump British railroad in India at exorbitant prices, sanctioned by the State. The colonial rule had blocked the growth of any industry in India and the deal was to charge anything the merchants wanted plus the five percent mark up. That was the incentive. The money incentive. The British were fascinated by wealth and money; they had always cried poverty, never had seen any money at any time in their history and how could they let that opportunity pass by. The money brought from India, as the ‘revenues’, was responsible for the rapid and hasty development of technological changes, but not something that could be classified as ‘Industrial Revolution’.

  Before the British established hegemony in the eastern part of India, they barely used about ten pounds of wrought iron per person. In the next fifty years, around the year 1800, the consumption barely doubled. In 1850, the export shot up to over a million tons signifying the export of rail road to India. Before the Indian economy entered in the British financial health, the output of iron in England was puny, it was much smaller than the production in France and then suddenly, in the middle of the nineteenth century, Britain was smelting almost two million tons, more than the rest of the World put together. The source of the British wealth was India, not any technology or any special breakthrough of technology ushering in the industrial revolution. Indian money was the sinew of the British wealth; it also became the sinews of the British war machine and helped Britain build the Empire.

  Cotton Textiles:

  Every nation, every country has a soul. The soul of the British people was money and they pursued money with a passion unimaginable by others. Their pursuit of money was not very illustrious, their methods were more foul than fair but a combination of forces gave them an opportunity to make money in somewhat fairer way, which they had never done before. They had already learnt to trade in hand made cotton textiles purchased in Bengal, India, but they wanted to produce cotton textiles at home because their women had taken up to wearing cottons and they did not let them do so because they would have lost profits earned from exporting Indian cotton imports.

  Until about the year 1700, the import of cotton textiles was banned for Home consumption, though Britain imported well over fifty to sixty million square yards of hand -made cotton textile goods from India. In 1774, the law was modified to allow the British to wear cotton goods produced and printed at home. When the cotton industry had to cater to the new demand, it became difficult to obtain the yarn. Simultaneously, the British fortunes in India had changed, they had become hegemons with the capture of the Diwani of Bengal and they visualized many opportunities to make money, most of all the abundance of cotton crop and unlimited sale and marketing opportunities in the Indian market. The spinning machine therefore came out of necessity as it took six spinners to feed one weaver.

  The invention of a spinning machine evolved in
1767 by Hargreaves of Blackburn. He called it the “jenny”, after his wife. The other people followed this machine, which worked by water. The water frame, as it was called, was invented by Arkwright in 1768 and rapidly got into the trade by 1785. The Jenny could be worked at home; the water frame however required people to be concentrated in one place, because of the need for waterpower and led to the factory system. The water frame gave the thread a firm twist that it was suitable for the warp (lengthwise yarn), the jenny could produce thread only for the weft (the yarn that runs across), with the result, that the cotton goods could be made in England for the first time. The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 by Whitney combed out the cottonseeds and made the supply of yarn abundant in England. In 1775, the cotton trade was further stimulated by the invention of the mule by Crompton, who by combining the jenny and the water frame evolved a cotton spinning machine that spun a yarn so fine that it was possible to develop muslins in England. The mule was adapted to waterpower by Kelly of Glasgow in 1792, and Dale, of New Lanark, was the first to use power for working it. Crompton himself worked his mule by power in 1803. By 1812, it had superseded Arkwright’s water frame for all fine yarns. The self-acting mules, which made spinning an automatic operation was however not invented until 1825.

  Other forces also played in favor of Britain, the advent of the steam ship and the takeover of the cotton Plantations in India, which have already been described with the result that the machine made cotton textile industry became a major industry in England. Hitherto, the cotton-spinning women were barely paid enough, but the spinning machine cost relatively nothing, so the cotton industry had a slow start as labor was cheap. The returning soldiers after the Napoleonic wars made the situation worse, as it dampened the wages further. The earnings of a weaver were puny, only about eight or nine shillings a week and the spinning women earned much less and it did not make sense to install the cotton machinery. The opening up of the Indian market allowed Britain to start dumping the cotton textiles in India, produced with cotton obtained from India at ridiculously low prices. The cotton textile industry thus got a sudden boost, uplifting the British economy and the living standard of the common man, as a majority of the people worked in the cotton textile industry.