Iron Men

How One London Factory Powered the Industrial Revolution and Shaped the Modern World

By (author) David Waller Foreword by Lord Norman Foster

Publication date:

01 September 2016

Publisher

Anthem Press

Dimensions:

216x140mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781783085446

In the early nineteenth century, Henry Maudslay, an engineer from a humble background, opened a factory in Westminster Bridge Road, a stone’s throw from the Thames. His workshop became in its day the equivalent of Google and Apple combined, attracting the country’s best in engineering talent. Their story of innovation and ambition tells how precision engineering made the industrial revolution possible, helping Great Britain become the workshop of the world.

Preface: The Queen and the Machines; 1. Building Blocks and Boring Machines – The Portsmouth Block Factory; 2. Maudslays – The Most Complete Factory in the Kingdom; 3. The Maudslay Men; 4. A Wonderful Undertaking – The Thames Tunnel; 5. Richard Roberts and the Iron Man of Manchester; 6. Charles Babbage, Joseph Clement, and the Mechanization of Thought; 7. The True Birth of the Railways; 8. James Hall Nasmyth – The Steam-Hammer and Entrepreneurial Triumph in Manchester; 9. The Maudslay Men and the Transport Revolution; 10.The Turn of the Screws – Sir Joseph Whitworth and the Quest for Mechanical Perfection; 11. The Great Lock Controversy of 1851; 12. Capital vs Labour: The Great Lock-Out of 1852; 13. Instruments of Destruction; 14. Endings and Legacies

'[David Waller] concentrates on London’s role in the industrial revolution and machine tool inventor Henry Maudslay, one of its linchpins. … He shows how Maudslay’s factory in Lambeth, established in 1810, inspired and informed a generation of engineers and enabled the industrial revolution by standardising parts and creating reliable machines to make them.' —The Financial Times