By “the first knowledge economy” we refer to the era of the Industrial Revolution from roughly the 1760s to the 1850s, first in Britain and then in selected parts of Northern and Western Europe, with particular attention to Belgium. Only and first in this period did economic growth based upon technological innovation become continuous. There were ebbs and flows to be sure, recessions, even depressions, but still the wealth of the affected nations continued to grow, and, slowly, so too did per capita income of families. Put another way, the so-called Malthusian dictum, that prosperity would fuel population growth that would inevitably be stopped by food shortages, came undone. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, real wages had risen, as had the population in general, and output in agriculture and manufacturing had also risen to meet the new demand.

Since that time the debate has raged as to how the dictum had been broken. What were the key factors that made sustained Western prosperity possible? The answer presented in this book focuses upon mechanical knowledge, derived largely but not exclusively from Newtonian science, and the theoretical underpinnings that it supplied to technological innovation in mining, manufacturing, and the application of steam power more generally. The new knowledge economy displayed many cultural elements – wider circulation of information, new teaching venues, and curricular reforms – more visible first in Britain than on the Continent. None of the elements was more important than the organized body of mechanical knowledge distilled in lectures, textbooks, and curricula. It was what French observers came to call industrial mechanics and it became crucial to technological innovation. When we speak in the present about our knowledge economy, it helps to know where and when an earlier version of it began.

Sometimes the lives of two men and their families open a previously obscured history and point toward the human capital expended, the striving and achievement at the heart of early industrial development. James Watt (b. 1736) of steam engine fame, and his partner, a manufacturer of metal objects, Matthew Boulton (b. 1728), need little introduction. The nature of their partnership does. It offers a paradigmatic example of the human qualities and shared values that propelled early industrial growth. Their partnership embodied a marriage between business sense and mechanical knowledge that together made possible the application of power technology to the mining and manufacturing process. Boulton did not simply supply the capital and Watt the know-how, as has been assumed. In the mid 1770s, Boulton and Watt established a partnership that rested on trust, thrift, mechanical knowledge, technical skill, and market experience.

Almost every successful partnership visible in the first generation of industrialists, from the 1780s to the 1820s, independently replicates the Boulton–Watt relationship. Sometimes the business acumen and mechanical knowledge rested in the same mind; most times it did not, as we shall see in the partnerships at work in textile manufacturing and coal mining. Mr. Clark, whom we met in the introduction, sought to bring his technical skills into contact with Lieven Bauwens, a Belgian but British-trained capitalist with a deep knowledge of the mechanization of cotton manufacturing.

Explanations about economic change are still bedeviled by unspoken philosophical assumptions. When talking about work and prosperity, or lack thereof, or about the production of goods and machines, we assume that the forces at play must be material – money being foremost among them. They have to be countable, movable, and capable of mathematical expression. Being truly scientific when studying economic change means that the historian, whenever possible, must use equations and numbers to express change over time. What a disruption to introduce something as vague as knowledge or education – that is, culture which, it is assumed, must be immaterial.

The unspoken assumptions rest on the old matter/spirit, body/mind dichotomy, with its roots deep in Western thought, both classical and Christian. Seen in this manner, one-dimensional homo economicus responds to material stimuli, rushes to make profit, invents technology when it is needed, and prides himself on the rationality of his choices. For example, when faced with an exorbitant cost of wage labor (even when he does not know, comparatively, that it is exorbitant), he seeks to develop other sources of energy, and in an effort to reduce his wage bill, turns to coal. To caricature the argument, he comes upon the right knowledge that just happens to be there when he needs it. In the eighteenth century, whether engaged in manufacturing or mining, the best means of achieving profitability meant accessing the new, coal-driven steam engine, among other mechanical devices.

The story about the need for technical knowledge to access coal in Northumberland’s deep mines has an analogue in the manufacturing of cotton. For decades, in both industries, we have been told that learned knowledge – as distinct from practice – had nothing to do with the First Industrial Revolution, that skilled artisans who seldom cracked a book held the key to British industrial prowess in cotton. In the production of cotton cloth, emphasis has been laid upon water power as distinct from steam, and thus the knowledge of mechanics – the science of local motion – needed to employ power technology has been neglected.

As with Boulton and Watt, two leaders in mechanized cotton production will have to stand in for the first generation of cotton manufacturers. As a leading cotton baron and one of the subjects of this chapter, John Kennedy (b. 1769) eventually became a wealthy man. In order to assemble his factory Kennedy had to understand different rates of velocity and the impact that a steam engine would have on spinning. Just as important, he had to understand and approve – or alter – plans for the mechanization of his cotton factory drawn up by civil engineers, in this case Boulton and Watt. Eventually Kennedy, in partnership with James M’Connel (b. 1762), figured out how to use the Watt engine effectively, and together they became among the leading cotton industrialists of Manchester.

Boulton and Watt knew that their steam engines, and those that preceded them, were vital for coal extraction, but history has forgotten just how important. Everyone agrees – then and now – that coal was essential in the early stages of what came to be called the Industrial Revolution. By the mid eighteenth century, even foreign observers sensed the growing importance of coal in Britain. In the 1750s French ministers charged with the task of overseeing industry and commerce devoted time and personal energy to assessing the state of manufacturing in both England and France. After seeing for themselves what was happening in England, they reported nervously on the great usage of coal in dyeing, cooking, and heating. Owners of mines can exploit the mines freely; indeed, the French ministers claimed that both owners and workers enjoy a greater freedom in Britain.

How did the British come to tap into the locked-up energy of coal? To answer the question we need look no further than the coal fields of Northumberland. When reading the records of early eighteenth-century mines there, it is routine to find computations made by viewers, as coal engineers were known, explaining how much coal cannot be accessed: “Both these seams in an acre, (to take half and leave half) will yield … 87000 tons at 12 s ten pence rent [and] will amount to £52,000. Little can be expected from a second working, because of fire & the water that lies above which will be let down by working the walls.” Again, the mine of Bowers and Rogers in Northumberland “has in it low and bad top coal, main coal must be won by a pumping Engine & ¾ of coal not worth working … main coal being cast down 7 or 8 fathoms & therefore cannot be wrought without drawing water.” In the same vicinity the viewer reported that “the seam at Monkcaton is 5 quarters & the coal exceeding good and clear, but not winnable, without a fire engine.” In 1749 an eighty-five-year-old miner recalled how it was not possible to get down to the coal in a mine “on account of the water which there was then no other way of drawing but by horses and coals not being so valuable then as now.” Another old-timer recalled “there being no way then for drawing it but by horses which would have been too great a charge.”