The Most Powerful Idea in the World Part 13

3 during the eighteenth century Alexander Broadie, The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

4 "the first six, with the eleventh and twelfth Books" Ibid.

5 "it is the princ.i.p.al sustenance" Henry Fielding, "An Inquiry into the Late Increase in Robbers," in Ronald Paulson, Henry Fielding: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge, 1995).

6 it had been founded "only" in 1631 Thomas H. Marshall, James Watt (17361819) (London and Boston: L. Parsons and Small, 1925).

7 "foreigners, alien or English" Ibid.

8 On the other hand, his willingness to leave London Ibid.

9 "to work as well as most journeymen" "James Watt," in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

10 "large, stately, and well-built city" George MacGregor, The History of Glasgow: From the Earliest History to the Present Time (London: Hamilton & Adams, 1881).

11 "every thing became Science" Eric Robinson and A. E. Musson, James Watt and the Steam Revolution: A Doc.u.mentary History (London: Adams & Dart, 1969).

12 "Allow me to give an instance" Ibid.

13 "set about repairing it" Birmingham Central Library (Birmingham, England) and Adam Matthew Publications, The Industrial Revolution: A Doc.u.mentary History. Series One: The Boulton and Watt Archive and the Matthew Boulton Papers from the Birmingham Central Library (Marlborough, Wilts.h.i.+re, England: Adam Matthew Publications, 1993).

14 "the toy cylinder exposed a greater surface" Marshall, James Watt.

15 Most textbooks plot a "boiling curve" Hasok Chang, Inventing Temperature: Measurement and Scientific Progress (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

16 two different "boyling" temperatures Ibid.

17 The measurement problem was acute enough Ibid.

18 One small example of it Mokyr, "The Great Synergy."

19 In one of his notebooks Richard L. Hills, "The Origins of James Watt's Perfect Engine," Transactions of the Newcomen Society 68, 1997.

20 "I mentioned it to my friend Dr. Black" Donald Fleming, "Latent Heat and the Invention of the Watt Engine," in Mayr, ed., Philosophers and Machines.

21 Watt didn't discover the existence of latent heat Ibid.

22 Heating the cylinder walls Hills, "The Origins of James Watt's Perfect Engine."

23 "ran on making engines cheap" James Patrick Muirhead, The Life of James Watt, with Selections from His Correspondence (London: J. Murray, 1858).

24 "steam was an elastic body" Birmingham Central Library (Birmingham, England) and Adam Matthew Publications, The Industrial Revolution: A Doc.u.mentary History. Series Three: The Papers of James Watt and His Family Formerly Held at Doldowlod House (Marlborough, England: A. Matthew, 1998).

25 "nearly as perfect" F. M. Scherer, "Invention and Innovation in the Watt-Boulton Steam Engine Venture," in Kranzberg, ed., Technology and Culture: An Anthology (New York: Schocken Books, 1972).

26 "I can think of nothing else" Watt to Lind, April 29, 1765, in Robinson and Musson, James Watt and the Steam Revolution.

27 "the invention was complete" Scherer, "Invention and Innovation in the Watt-Boulton Steam Engine Venture."

28 "A Company for carrying on an undertaking" Charles Mackay, Josef Penso de la Vega, and Martin S. Fridson, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (New York: Wiley, 1996).

29 "I am going on with the Modell" Watt to Roebuck, September 9, 1765, in Robinson and Musson, James Watt and the Steam Revolution.

30 As a result, he tried dozens of combinations Scherer, "Invention and Innovation in the Watt-Boulton Steam Engine Venture."

31 "Cotton was proposed" Birmingham Central Library and Adam Matthew Publications, The Industrial Revolution: A Doc.u.mentary History. Series One: The Boulton and Watt Archive and the Matthew Boulton Papers from the Birmingham Central Library.

32 "Dear Jim... Let me suggest a method" Ibid.

33 "what I knew about the steam engine" Ibid.

34 "my princ.i.p.al hindrance" Muirhead, Life of James Watt.

35 "relief amidst [his] vexations" Birmingham Central Library and Adam Matthew Publications, The Industrial Revolution: A Doc.u.mentary History. Series One: The Boulton and Watt Archive and the Matthew Boulton Papers from the Birmingham Central Library.

36 "have given me health and spirits" Marshall, James Watt.

37 "the Most compleat Manufacturer" Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002).

38 "I would rather face a loaded cannon" Scherer, "Invention and Innovation in the Watt-Boulton Steam Engine Venture."

39 "I was excited by two motivs" Boulton to Watt, February 7, 1769, in Robinson and Musson, James Watt and the Steam Revolution.

CHAPTER SIX: THE WHOLE THING WAS ARRANGED IN MY MIND.

1 "It was in the Green of Glasgow" Robert Hart, "Reminiscences of James Watt," Transactions of the Glasgow Archaeological Society 1, no. 1, with commentary by John W. Stephens, at http://www.history.rochester.edu/steam/.

2 By the 1990s, Ericsson's research was demonstrating K. Anders Ericsson, "Creative Expertise as Superior Reproducible Performance: Innovative and Flexible Aspects of Expert Performance," Psychological Inquiry 10, no. 4, 1999.

3 When a single neuron chemically fires David Robson, "Disorderly Genius: How Chaos Drives the Brain," New Scientist, June 29, 2009.

4 This was expected M. Jung-Beeman, "Neural Activity When People Solve Verbal Problems with Insight," PLoS Biology 2, no. 4, April 2004.

5 "The relaxation phase is crucial" Jonah Lehrer, "The Eureka Hunt," The New Yorker, July 28, 2008.

6 Some of the results were predictable Joseph Rossman, The Psychology of the Inventor: A Study of the Patentee (Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.: Inventors Publis.h.i.+ng, 1931).

7 "lack of capital" Ibid.

8 more than half will continue to invest their time Thomas Astebro, "Inventor Perseverance After Being Told to Quit: The Role of Cognitive Biases," Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 20, January 2007.

9 "may be inventors" Scherer, "Invention and Innovation in the Watt-Boulton Steam Engine Venture," citing Joseph Schumpeter's Theory of Economic Development.

10 Another study, this one conducted in 1962 Donald W. MacKinnon, "Intellect and Motive in Scientific Inventors: Implications for Supply," in Simon Kuznets, ed., The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity: Economic and Social Factors (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962).

11 the eighteenth-century Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli Peter L. Bernstein, Against the G.o.ds: The Remarkable Story of Risk (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996).

12 "The more inventive an independent inventor is" MacKinnon, "Intellect and Motive in Scientific Inventors: Implications for Supply," in Kuznets, ed., Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity.

13 "first scientific man to study the Newcomen engine" "Henry Beighton" in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

14 Leonhard Euler applied Usher, History of Mechanical Inventions.

15 His published table of results Jennifer Karns Alexander, The Mantra of Efficiency: From Waterwheel to Social Control (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).

16 The resulting experiment Pacey, Maze of Ingenuity.

17 His example showed a generation of other engineers Mokyr, "The Great Synergy," quoting Cardwell, 1994.

18 "In comparing different experiments" Pacey, Maze of Ingenuity.

19 As far back as the 1960s Dean Keith Simonton, "Creativity as Blind Variation and Selective Retention: Is the Creative Process Darwinian?" Psychological Inquiry 10, no. 4, 1999.

20 "ideational mutations" Ibid.

21 "self-perpetuating feedback loops" James Flynn, What Is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

22 at some point, the recruits are going to reduce Fritz Machlup, "The Supply of Inventors and Inventions," in Kuznets, ed., Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity.

23 In Machlup's exercise Ibid.

24 "a statement that five hours of Mr. Doakes' time" Ibid.

25 "as the greatest and most useful man" Hart, "Reminiscences of James Watt."

CHAPTER SEVEN: MASTER OF THEM ALL.

1 "woolen cowl for winter" From The Holy Rule of St. Benedict, translated by Rev. Boniface Verheyen, OSB (Atchison, KS: Abbey Student Press, 1949).

2 The monks of St. Victor's Abbey Mokyr, Lever of Riches.

3 The distinction was the work Pauline Matara.s.so, The Cistercian World: Monastic Writings of the Twelfth Century (London and New York: Penguin, 1993).

4 In 1997, a team of archaeologists R. W. Vernon, "The Geophysical Evaluation of an Iron-Working Complex: Rievaulx and Environs, North Yorks.h.i.+re," Archaeological Prospection 5, no. 4, April 1998.

5 from the random magnetism Gerry McDonnell, "Geophysical Techniques Applied to Early Metalworking Sites," The Historical Metallurgy Society, Data Sheet #4, April 1995.

6 Men were smelting iron in Coalbrookdale The oldest surviving furnace at the site has a lintel carrying several dates, of which the earliest is 1638, but a dozen different operators produced iron at Coalbrookdale for decades both before and after its installation. Arthur Raistrick, Dynasty of Iron Founders: The Darbys and Coalbrookdale (London and New York: Longmans, 1953).

7 "A certain quant.i.ty of iron ore" Agricola, Herbert Hoover, and Lou Hoover, Georgius Agricola De re metallica (London: Mining Magazine, 1912). The Hoovers-the future president and his wife-make a good case that Agricola's description of iron manufacture was lifted, more or less unchanged, from a prior work by Vanoccio Biringuccio.

8 The Dutch secret turned out to be Usher, History of Mechanical Inventions.

9 "a new way of casting iron bellied pots" Samuel Smiles, Industrial Biography: Iron-Workers and Tool-Makers (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1864).

10 "to make iron, steel, or lead" List and Index Society, Calendar of Patent Rolls 30, Eliz. I, p. 57 (Kew, UK: National Archives, 2008).

11 "sole priviledge to make iron" "Simon Sturtevant" in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

12 "the mystery, art, way, and means" Thomas Webster, Reports and Notes of Cases on Letters Patent for Inventions (16071855) (London: Blenkarn, 1844).

13 In the event, the younger Dudley Gerald Newman and Leslie Ellen Brown, Britain in the Hanoverian Age, 17141837: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland, 1997).

14 His partners, Sir George Horsey William Hyde Price, The English Patents of Monopoly (Clark, NJ: Lawbook Exchange, 2006).

15 "work for remelting and casting" Peter W. King, "Sir Clement Clerke and the Adoption of Coal in Metallurgy," Transactions of the Newcomen Society 73, no. 1, 20012002.

16 Luckily for Darby Eugene S. Ferguson, "Metallurgical and Machine-Tool Developments," in Kranzberg and Pursell, eds., Technology in Western Civilization.

17 His greatest contribution to metallurgical history Cyril Stanley Smith, "Metallurgy in the 17th and 18th Centuries," in Kranzberg and Pursell, eds., Technology in Western Civilization.

18 After nearly ten years of secret experiments "Benjamin Huntsman" in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

19 His furnaces could be made Smith, "Metallurgy in the 17th and 18th Centuries," in Kranzberg and Pursell, eds., Technology in Western Civilization.

20 He departed from the norm Joel Mokyr, The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).

21 in 1750, when Britain consumed Pacey, Maze of Ingenuity.

22 "the father of the iron trade" The Times, editorial, July 29, 1856.

23 a relatively pure form of wrought iron From Dr. Joseph Gross's description of Wood's process in Puddling in the Iron Works of Merthyr Tydfil, quoted at http://www.henrycort.net.

24 "The puddlers were the artistocracy" Postan and Habakkuk, The Cambridge Economic History of Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966).

25 "a peculiar method of preparing" R. A. Mott and Peter Singer, Henry Cort, The Great Finer: Creator of Puddled Iron (London: Metals Society, 1983).

26 The source of the funds Newman and Brown, Britain in the Hanoverian Age.

27 Not only had grooved rollers Jennifer Tann, "Richard Arkwright and Technology," History: The Journal of the Historical a.s.sociation 58, no. 192, February 1973.

28 "cleansed of sulphurous matter" R. A. Mott and P. Singer, Henry Cort, the Great Finer: Creator of Puddled Iron (London: Metals Society, 1983), quoted at http://www.henrycort.net.