2. The Golden Boys (also known as The Carpet Salesmen): Gilded
Statue of Matthew Boulton, James Watt and William Murdoch by
William Bloye of Birmingham School of Art, Broad Street,
Birmingham (1956)
3. • Matthew Boulton by C. F. von
Breda, 1792
• Birmingham was a long-standing
centre of production of metal
goods
• Boulton pioneered the mass
production of highly finished small
objects: belts, buckles, boxes, toys
• The Soho Manufactory, shown
here in the background, was the
largest factory in the world
• But the portrait illustrates
Boulton’s wider philosophical and
scientific pretentions
• He is shown with some items from
his collection of geological
specimens
• His interest in manufacturing
grounded in an engagement with
science and philosophy
4. • Portrait by Breda of James
Watt
• Born in Scotland, Watt
trained as maker of scientific
instruments in London
• Struggled to earn a living
• Employed to repair scientific
instruments at the
University of Glasgow
• Invented separate steam
condenser in 1765, but
struggled to secure finance
to develop invention
• Partnership with Boulton
established in 1775
5.
6. • Model of rational factory used by James Watt to assist in planning production
• Boulton and Watt very forward looking: 'Neither [Frederick] Taylor, [Henry] Ford, nor other
experts devised anything… that cannot be discovered at Soho before 1805.’
• The Industrial Revolution was a major shift in our engagement with technology just as (if
not more) profound than current digital revolution
• The cliched historical comparison for digital technology is with the arrival of print, but
maybe the economic, social and cultural changes of the late 18th century are a better
comparison
• Like the computer, the steam engine is a universal machine. Was deployed in many
contexts from mining to mints.
• The computer itself is a product of the Industrial Revolution: the idea of the computer
programme dervived from the punch cards used to control Jacquard’s power loom:
http://www.computersciencelab.com/ComputerHistory/HistoryPt2.htm
• What lessons do Boulton and Watt offer us today?
11. Watt and Industrial Revolution 2.0
• New technologies can be explosive and
patterns of development unpredictable
• Ubiquity: it was assumed that steam could be
applied to everything from transport to
sculpture
• A refusal to be pigeon-holed with one
technology or one approach
• Interaction with aesthetics and creation
• The importance of making; nature of creativity
13. The importance of measurement.
MAKING DEPENDS ON DATA.
Industrial Revolutions arise from new relations
between data and making.
14. • Watt produced a very accurate form of slide rule with a new design to help
him calculate pressures and loadings
• Watt was asked to produce his new slide rules for general use. The ‘Soho’
slide rule was much more accurate than previous designs and was the first
standardised slide rule
• Watt wanted to use machines to process numbers. He worked out a method
whereby a machine could be used to perform addition, subtraction,
multiplication and division
• Contemporary manufacturing techniques were not sufficiently precise to
realise Watt’s vision: as Babbage later found
16. Conditions of creativity
• Provincial outsiders: from Glasgow and
Birmingham
• They worked outside the formal academy
• But they were profoundly engaged with current
scientific and scholarly theory
• They saw no distinction between invention,
manufacturing and philosophy: ‘hack v yack’
would have made no sense to them: they yacked
as they hacked.
• Supported by and connected with strong
informal networks of ideas and endeavour
17. James Watt at the University of
Glasgow
John Robison: All the young lads of our little place that
were any way remarkable for scientific predilection were
acquaintances of Mr Watt; and his parlour was a
rendezvous for all of his description. Whenever any
puzzle came in the way of any of us, we went to Mr Watt.
He needed only to be prompted; everything became to
him the beginning of a new and serious study; and we
knew that he would not quit it till he had either
discovered its insignificance, or had made something of
it. No matter in what line – languages, antiquity, natural
history, - nay, poetry, criticism, and works of taste; as to
anything in the line of engineering, whether civil or
military, he was at home, and a ready instructor.
19. • Watt’s workshop wasn’t a laboratory or a
grand building, but it was probably the most
important facility there has ever been in the
500 years of the University of Glasgow
• Do we need that type of space now and if so,
what would it look like?
• Perhaps the FabLab movement provides one
answer
21. Above all:
• Watt questioned everything, and examined every
problem afresh from first principles
• Never accepted existing standards or procedures,
but reasoned afresh each time
• Robison’s story of the masonic pipe organ
illustrates Watt’s constant inventiveness
• How far in digital activities do we challenge and
question in the way that Watt did?
• His copier a good example of reinventing from
first principles
24. Where does Matthew Boulton fit into
all this?
• Watt was struggling to develop his invention:
Boulton brought together the craft tradition of
Birmingham with factory production
• Boulton had the vision of ubiquity and drove
Watt forward – ‘What I sell is Power’
• The importance of the patent: opposite of open
access. But shows the importance of business
models. In 1775, a sound business model was just
as important as groundbreaking technology
28. The Lessons of Boulton and Watt
• There is no distinction between technology,
theory and manufacture – they are all
seamlessly interconnected.
• Innovation occurs wherever there is
speculation, debate and making. It is not
confined to the academy. More likely outside
the academy.
• Making is a theoretical (or philosophical)
statement.
