Age of Invention by Anton Howes

It’s been a long while since my last post, for which I can only apologise. A lot has been going on. I went on a long trip in April to Japan, for which I pre-scheduled three pieces to be published both while I was away and immediately after I got back. But then once I had got back, I moved to a new city — a process that has taken a lot more effort than anticipated.

I’ve been reading more from the 1776 travel diary of Samuel More. Last week I quoted his impressions of John “Iron Mad” Wilkinson’s volcano-like iron foundry at New Willey in Shropshire, and how the region was already starting to see the proliferation of iron railroads — long before the rise of steam locomotives.

The other week I was tipped off by a fellow researcher to the existence of some very interesting manuscripts in the British Library — the travel diaries of Samuel More, secretary to the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. The Society of Arts during More’s long tenure — 1769 to 1799 — was one of the most prominent invention-supporting organisations in Britain, giving out cash and honorary prizes each year to unpatented inventions.

My head has lately been full of steam. Last week I wrote about Boulton and Watt’s surprising business model — selling steam as a service, rather than steam engines — and I’m still looking into how exactly Watt arrived at his transformative improvements. (There’s also an exciting steam-related collaboration in the works with Jason Crawford.

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hout Capital. In it, they noted a remarkable trend in many modern economies. Rather than firms investing in traditional, material assets like machines, vehicles, and factories — assets you can actually touch — more and more firms have been investing in things like software, data, design, branding, training, networks, and business processes. Modern economies have become increasingly based on intangibles. Assets you can’t touch, but which still make all the difference between failure and success.

You’re reading Age of Invention, my newsletter on the causes of the British Industrial Revolution and the history of innovation. This edition went out to over 16,300 subscribers. To support my work, you can upgrade your subscription here: As a historian, I’m often surprised by the ways people use my work. I rarely draw direct lessons from history for the present, and when I do, it’s rare for me to do so explicitly.

In this update for the newsletter’s supporters, I’d like to share a few things I’m still investigating. Following last week’s post on how the Dutch managed to lower their interest rates by making capital as abundant as possible, I’ve been doing some more digging into the context of the brute-force English policy of simply making it illegal to lend over a certain rate.

You’re reading Age of Invention, my newsletter on the causes of the British Industrial Revolution and the history of innovation. This edition went out to over 15,600 subscribers. To support my work, you can upgrade your subscription here: One of the weird things about Britain, despite its being the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, is that its financial infrastructure was for a long time remarkably backward.

t in constitutional history, but is essentially unknown to the public at large, and seems to be very poorly understood even by many historians. It matters, because Parliament very suddenly and unexpectedly decided that it wasn’t just a legislative body, but a court of law. It brought down the Lord Chancellor, Francis Bacon, for corruption — yes, that Francis Bacon famous for his philosophy of science. It systematically examined and decried patent monopolies, which had been granted by the king.