Case Study II: The Engineering Industry

Abstract

Although the idea that the ‘first industrial revolution’ was fundamentally an affair of cotton and iron is beginning to lose some of its former emphasis there can be little doubt that these sectors contributed significantly to European industrial growth in the first half of the nineteenth century. In the case of iron, continuous improvements in technique brought down production costs. Advances were made in the mixing or cooking of the raw materials, changes were effected in the size and dimensions of the furnace itself, Nielson’s hot air blast introduced in 1829 yielded considerable fuel savings, changes in the furnace bed served to reduce waste. All of these refinements were accompanied by price reductions and improvements in the quality of cast and wrought iron. At the same time the increasing sophistication of engineering techniques which enabled iron to be worked to ever finer standards of accuracy, together with new machinery inventions and the introduction of railways, provided an ever expanding market for iron using products. These developments are reflected in the tremendous upsurge of pig iron production in this period (Table 5.1.).