Iron, Steam & Money

by Roger Osborne

  This was a horribly difficult situation for bona fide inventors and innovators who wanted legal protection. First and foremost, the granting of patents was a slow and expensive process, going through ten separate offices of state. If at any stage a caveat, which allowed others to be warned of applications in their field, could be found it would delay the process by around six months. The costs of gaining a patent were around £100 to £120 for an English patent, with the same amount again for a patent valid in Scotland.

  A second difficulty concerned the necessary specification of the invention. Often applications were disqualified because there was some minor fault in the specification; and it was possible that an application could go through every stage and then fall at the last hurdle. More seriously there was vagueness about what the specification should show – was it supposed to be a general guide to the device or process, a clear indication of the novelty of the invention or, as emerged later, a thorough technical template from which a ‘typical’ engineer could build the device or run the process? Inventors were understandably reluctant to reveal too much about their inventions in the specification when they could not rely on the Patent Office to fully protect them.

  This leads us to a third area of difficulty, which concerned the law. The Patent Office did not enforce the law; instead, when challenged, inventors had to defend their right to a patent in a common law court. Common law depends on the development of precedents, but most judges were ignorant of case law in this area, which was in any event confusing. James Watt’s lawyer noted in 1785 that in the records of case law at the time there were no entries in the indexes for Patent or Monopoly; cases had been tried but their value in law had not been recognised, therefore no future judge could avail himself of precedent.

  The variation in judges’ opinions was also alarming as some believed that every invention should be freely available to all, while others saw that, without protection, innovation would cease or inventors would keep their secrets to themselves (a good example of the latter is Benjamin Huntsman’s method of making crucible steel). And while there seemed to be some improvement in protection from the late 1760s, this was often down to the legal and political skills of inventors and their supporters, who gradually grew more powerful.

  The law became clearer through the 1780s and 90s but there was still insecurity and uncertainty. Judges disagreed over whether an invention could cover a process as well as a machine (over two-thirds of patents were for processes); others tried to differentiate between a manufacturing process, a method and a principle. Judges questioned whether a patent should apply only to an object already created, or could be granted for something that was yet to be made. And should the invention be saleable, or could it be something made just for interest? While hearing the Hornblower vs Boulton & Watt case in 1799 Lord Kenyon, Chief Justice from 1788 to 1802 – during the period when inventions made Britain the leading industrial power in the world – declared from the bench: ‘I’m not one who greatly favours patents.’

  Burghley’s intentions that existing trade should be not be damaged by patents, and that they should not be granted to inventions that simply improved on existing techniques, were not officially abandoned until 1776 in Morris vs Branson, where Justice Mansfield concluded that their continuation ‘would go to repeal almost every patent that was ever granted’.

  Despite this level of ignorance and hostility from the law, the patent system was a crucial element in the development of inventions and innovations. We can draw this conclusion from the practice of inventors themselves: almost all the significant inventions of the late eighteenth century were patented, and most patents that were granted, were awarded to serious inventors. But why would inventors want to invest time and money acquiring protection that was so difficult to defend? The main reason was that, imperfect though they were, patents were the only legal support for their claims of originality. These were professional men, either improving their own business or using their expertise to make money through licensing their inventions: patents were therefore a key tool for their business. Inventors in the Industrial Revolution were motivated above all by commercial returns; the use of the patent system, the diversification of inventors into other areas and the trade in inventions through sale and licence shows that they were not lucky amateurs but astute, profit-seeking artisans. Although the system came in for a good deal of criticism and patents and patent extensions were resisted and contested by fellow inventors and industrialists, they didn’t want the system abandoned; instead they wanted it safeguarded and improved.

  In addition, while the patent system of the mid-eighteenth century was a rough and ready affair, the inventors themselves, through the success of their inventions and the prosperity that they brought, showed the widespread benefits of a robust patent system; this changed the views of judges and decisively altered the interpretations of the law. The figures here are stark: in the period from 1750 to 1799, of all patent cases decided at common law courts 39 per cent went to the patent-holder, 61 per cent to the objector or infringer; by the 1840s the respective figures were 76 per cent and 24 per cent. Judges finally accepted that inventions led to the growth of industry, not its constriction; if the judges’ benches were the last bastion of resistance to innovation, they too eventually caved in.

  The patent system was clearly not for the faint-hearted; many inventors had patents overturned while others had to go to court to protect rights that should have been upheld by statute and regulation. It is therefore a massive historical paradox that the very messiness of the patent system in the eighteenth century may, in practice, have made it ideal. The system gave just enough protection to inventors to encourage them to innovate, but not enough to stop others from working the system by pirating other people’s inventions, or making small improvements that kept the momentum of innovation going. The imperfection of the system allowed ideas and innovations to spread through industries, and encouraged a vast number of technical people operating below the level of true invention to join in the changes that enabled industry to continue its relentless search for efficiency.

  II. Coal

  ‘Coal is not only used in common fires, but in most mechanic professions that require the greatest expense of fuel.’

  JOHN HOUGHTON, 1682

  4. Fuelling the Revolution

  MEDIEVAL AND EARLY modern Europe was able to sustain a large and growing population from two principal natural resources – good land for growing crops and rearing livestock, and a legacy of vast forests. Trees provided material for housing, boats and ships, machinery, furniture, vehicles and tools, and, crucially, they provided an apparently limitless supply of fuel. But the expanding population, together with the increasing demand for charcoal from growing industries, began to put pressure on supplies. More people meant more burning of wood for fuel; it also created a growing need for land to grow crops.

  Britain began to solve its energy problem during the seventeenth century with the growing adoption of coal as a fuel for home and industry. The figures are impressive: in 1560 total coal production in Britain was around 250,000 tons per year, by 1700 this had increased tenfold to 2.7 million tons and by 1750 production had reached 4.7 million tons. By 1700 the country’s mines were producing nearly 80 per cent of the total coal being mined in Europe – Britain was leading the world into a new type of energy economy.1

  The availability and easy access to vast reserves of cheap coal enabled British people to gain a prosperity unknown in the rest of Europe or indeed the world. In the early eighteenth century the estimated price of energy was around nine grams of silver per million BTUfn1 in Beijing and Paris, roughly five grams in London and Amsterdam and less than one gram in Newcastle. Thanks to its cheap coal, the ratio of wages to energy was higher in Newcastle and the northern English coalfields than anywhere else in the world.2

  By the 1760s Britain was prospering from its widespread use of coal to produce heat, or thermal energy; this was followed by the breakthrough into t
he use of coal as a source of power, or mechanical energy, triggering the great revolution in industrial production that is at the centre of this book. It is clear that this growing coal economy was a necessary precursor to the Industrial Revolution, so how did it come about?

  Britain is rich in mineral resources. Its very particular geological history has bequeathed an astonishing range of rocks from every period and a bounty of coal, iron, lead, copper, tin, zinc, lime and even gravel, that enabled Britain’s Industrial Revolution to be largely self-sustained. The coal is almost all from the Carboniferous period and is either exposed on the surface or available via shafts in the north-east of England, Yorkshire, Lancashire, the Midlands, Kent and Gloucestershire, as well as in South Wales and central Scotland.

  Britain’s position on the edge of the European continental plate brought about several episodes of volcanic and igneous activity during its geological history. Hot magma was pushed up into the earth’s crust and heated the surrounding rock, sending groundwater rich in minerals percolating through the existing strata. This process was particularly productive in south-west England where, around 300 million years ago, igneous activity formed the great granite masses that underlie the moorlands of Devon and Cornwall. The subsequent heat led to hot fluids spreading through surrounding rocks and leaving metallic ores. The metals were deposited in a particular order as the liquid cooled; this was long known by Cornish miners who coined the expression ‘Black Jack rides a good horse’ to describe how the black zinc ore called zincblende would usually lie on top of tin and copper ores – so find Black Jack and dig down.

  British coalfields: Britain had large quantities of easily available coal, particularly in the Midlands and North of England, Central Scotland and South Wales; in many places coal seams were near to rich seams of iron ore.

  Bell pit: One of the earliest forms of mining. The mine is dug down into the seam, which is hollowed out in a dome or bell shape. Once the danger of roof collapse is imminent the mine is abandoned and another dug nearby.

  The earliest mines were drifts cut into the side of hills, following the coal seams downwards into the earth, or bell pits dug vertically downwards and then out as far as possible before the roof was in danger of collapse. As the demand for coal increased miners realised that more reserves could be reached by sinking vertical shafts. They then worked outwards from these shafts, using either pillar and stall or long-wall methods, robbing the seams as they went.3

  Before the sixteenth century coal was largely local fuel, restricted to certain parts of the country; difficulties in transport and the plentiful amounts of wood available in most areas, together with its unsuitability for tasks like heating houses (see here) diminished its importance. But there were early indications that supplies of wood for fuel were running low in some places. As early as 1255 there had been concern that two limekilns in Wellington Forest in Somerset had consumed 500 oaks; while in 1559 stocks of timber had fallen so low around Worcester that a law forbade the felling of timber for iron production within fourteen miles of the Severn. In medieval London occasional shortages of charcoal forced lime-burners, brewers and dyers to use coal, leading to intermittent complaints about coal smoke in the capital. Although these were local problems they hint at a delicate balance between manufacturing and fuel resources.

  Adit mine: A vertical shaft is sunk to where it meets the sloping coal seam, which is then worked out. The coal and miners are taken up the shaft in baskets. An adit is dug out from the seam to the hillside to drain the mine. As shafts were sunk deeper drainage became a major problem.

  Charcoal produced an intense clean heat that was widely used in iron-making, baking and brewing. But as craft industries grew and intensified the supply of wood for charcoal, alongside the demand for timber for house-building, shipping and all manner of vehicles and implements, native woodlands simply could not replenish themselves. Timber simply became too scarce and too expensive, and so British craftsmen began to turn towards coal as an alternative source of heat.

  The principal obstacle to switching was transport. This was easiest solved through rivers and coastal shipping; in 1530 the Crown granted a monopoly of coal shipping on the Tyne to the city of Newcastle’s Quayside, showing that the area was already developing its coal trade. For the next 300 years river boats known as keels took coal out to flat-bottomed ships known as colliers, which sailed down the east coast. The colliers returned with sand ballast which turned the Tyne and Wear valleys into centres of glass-making. The amount of coal brought from the Durham and Northumberland coalfields to London increased from around 500,000 to 2 million tons in the course of the eighteenth century; and while a collier carried 140 tons in 1700 by 1840 capacity increased to 580 tons. The trade sustained shipbuilding centres right along the east coast from South Shields to Sunderland, Whitby and Lowestoft. Ipswich, for example, owed its prosperity to the trade with many shipowners building grand houses in the town.4

  Coal was shipped along the Severn between Bristol, Shropshire and Staffordshire, around the coast of Kent to the Thames Estuary, along the Clyde and Forth in Scotland and the Humber and Trent in the English Midlands. Cardiff, Swansea, Newport, Newcastle, North and South Shields, Hartlepool, Hull and Grimsby all owed their prosperity to coal shipping. And it was the demand for coal that drove the coming revolution in transport (see Chapters 18 and 19) with canals and steam locomotives developed to move the fuel that powered the new economy.

  Coal consumption in different crafts shows just how varied the industrial landscape was before the great events of the late eighteenth century, and how far removed it already was from a rural subsistence economy. Most manufactories had few problems in changing from charcoal while some that had traditionally used coal increased capacity markedly during the eighteenth century. Lime was perhaps the key example of the latter. Limestone was burned in kilns to produce lime, which was of crucial importance in agriculture; applied to the soil it encourages plant growth and increases the efficiency of manuring. With the value of wheat and barley steadily increasing through the seventeenth century, lime became ever more important. In 1625 Walter Blith wrote that lime ‘is of excellent use, yea, so great that whole countries, and many counties, that were naturally as barren as any in this nation . . . doth and hath brought their land into such a posture, for bearing all sorts of corn, that upon the land not worth above one or two shillings an acre, they will raise (well husbanded with lime) as good wheat, barley and white and grey peas, as England yields’.5

  Lime was also used for mortar and lime washes in the building trade. Huge quantities of coal had been used to produce lime for building projects like Conwy and Caernarvon Castles in the thirteenth century and Rochester Castle in the fourteenth, as well as for the Tower of London and Windsor Castle, but these isolated projects were dwarfed by the building boom of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries during which wood was replaced by bricks and mortar. Every town had limekilns to supply its builders, while the countryside was dotted with kilns. The voracious needs of London builders were supplied by kilns grouped at Gravesend and Northfleet on the Thames Estuary with other concentrations of kilns on the Tyne, Forth and Severn.

  Brick production required yet more fuel. More bricks were ‘spoiled’ in a coal firing than a wood or charcoal one but this loss was soon compensated by the low price of coal. In London, the south-east and the east, where there was a lack of stone and timber and plentiful supplies of good clay, bricks were the prime building material. By the 1660s brick was in use in most parts of the country and clay and wood buildings began to disappear. Clay roof tiles were also made in coal-fired kilns, as was the growing amount of pottery.

  The salt industry was another huge consumer of coal. After being self-sufficient in salt up to the twelfth century, English salt-makers lost out to cheap imports from Aquitaine, which England ruled from 1154 to 1453. But political disruption in France in the 1500s led to a massive surge in output in Britain. In places like Sunderland it was the salt works
that drove the need for coal, and brought about the opening of new collieries. Tyneside, with its cheap coal and good transport links, now became a prime centre of salt production; by 1644 there were 222 salt pans along the Tyne, consuming an estimated 95,000 tons of coal a year. By the 1720s the process of evaporating seawater to obtain salt was made more fuel efficient, but it still took between six and eight tons of coal to produce one ton of salt. By the early eighteenth century salt-making consumed between 7 and 10 per cent of the coal produced in Britain.

  Other industries had to make adaptations if they were to replace charcoal with coal. One technique was to use coked coal – coal that had been slowly baked to drive out water and other impurities. Where this wasn’t possible the principal requirement was to separate the fuel and its harmful smoke from the products themselves, although this could not be done in an iron blast furnace, and special coke derived from low-sulphur coal had to be used. But in steel-making, food-processing, brewing, dyeing and the burgeoning chemical and textile trades, makers successfully adapted their processes and equipment to the new fuel. Cheap coal and growing demand enabled these trades to expand prodigiously, and enter a virtuous circle where they could reduce prices and encourage yet more demand. The brewing trade is a case in point; in the middle of the seventeenth century Derby malters started using coke to replace charcoal, and Derby malt and beer became highly sought after. A London brewing house could use as much as 1,000 tons of coal a year and most brewing towns – Burton, Derby, Tadcaster, Nottingham, Shrewsbury, Bridgnorth, Lichfield, Plymouth – had access to cheap coal.