Mechanical Science on the Factory Floor: The Early Industrial Revolution in Leeds

See Musson A. E. Robinson Eric , Science and technology in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1969). Ian Inkster comments, “The associations of intellect and of technique were more widespread in 1851 than often thought, and acted as a solid base to the Great Exhibition of that year and to the subsequent twenty years of Golden Age machinofacture”, in the volume edited with Griffin Colin , The Golden Age: Essays in British social and economic history, 1850–1870 (Aldershot, 2000), 171. See also Jacob Margaret Stewart Larry , Practical matter: Newton's science in the service of industry and empire 1687–1851 (Cambridge, MA, 2004); Stewart L. , “A meaning for machines: Modernity, utility, and the eighteenth-century British public”, Journal of modern history, lxx (1998), 1998–94; idem, “The boast of Matthew Boulton: Invention, innovation and projectors in the Industrial Revolution”, Economia e energia secc. XIII—XVIII (Prato, 2003), 993–1010; and Jacob Margaret Reid David , “Technical knowledge and the mental universe of early cotton manufacturers, 1800–1830”, Canadian journal of history, xxxvii (2001), 2001–304, translated as “Culture et culture technique des premiers fabricants de coton de Manchester”, Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, l (2003), 2003–55. The argument presented here builds upon Jacob Margaret C. , The cultural meaning of the Scientific Revolution (New York, 1988) and Scientific culture and the making of the Industrial West (New York, 1997). Endorsing and expanding on these arguments is Joel Mokyr, The gifts of Athena: Historical origins of the knowledge economy (Princeton, 2002), 66. In a forthcoming book, A peculiar path: The rise of the West in global context, 1500–1850 (Cambridge, MA, to appear), Jack Goldstone will make a similar argument. And see Horn Jeff , “Machine-breaking in England and France during the Age of Revolution”, Labour / Le travail, lv (2005), 2005–66, and The path not taken: French industrialization in the Age of Revolution, 1750–1830 (Cambridge, MA, 2006).

Laudan Rachel , “Natural alliance or forced marriage? Changing relations between the histories of science and technology”, Technology and culture, xxxvi/2 (Supplement, 1995), S19–22, and I would endorse her conclusion that “it is now generally accepted that there is something distinctive about technological knowledge and that it is neither … tacit nor simply applied science”.

Found in Klein Ursula , “Technoscience avant la lettre”, Perspectives on science, xiii (2005), 226–66, p. 228. For Newtonian science and ballistics, see Steele Brett D. , “Military ‘progress’ and Newtonian science in the Age of Enlightenment”, in Steele Brett D. Dorland Tamara (eds), The heirs of Archimedes: Science and the art of war through the age of Enlightenment (Cambridge, MA, 2005), 361–90.

In the period from 1780 to 1800 new professions appeared for the first time in the town: Cotton and fustian manufacturers, flax and worsted spinners, printers on cloth, machine makers, pattern makers and potters; see Rimmer W. G. , “The industrial profile of Leeds, 1740–1840”, Publications of the Thoresby Society, Miscellany, xiv/2 (1967), 130–57, p. 135. On the phenomenon of innovation seen more broadly see Nowotny Helga (ed.), Cultures of technology and the quest for innovation (New York, 2006).

Lefèvre Wolfgang , “Science as labor”, Perspectives on science, xiii (2005), 194–225, has some useful things to say about the relationship but his vision generally concerns nineteenth- and twentieth-century forms of techno-science. Writing in the same issue, pp. 156–7, Barry Barnes offers a useful discussion of the various meanings given to the term, in “Elusive memories of technoscience”.

Here I have been informed by the arguments found in Baird Davis , Thing knowledge: A philosophy of scientific instruments (Los Angeles, 2004).

The Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, Special Collections, Marshall MSS, MS200/42, unfoliated; one page contains this note, made it would seem as the result of reading: “Leslie on Heat 8vo. 1804 communicate to air 1/750 part of the whole heat which it contains, & it will expand 1/250 part of its bulk”; see also MS200/57, Notebook c. 1790, f. 1, Steam Engine, gives a list of engines at work in the region with all of their specifics and continues on f. 27 … undated, including some engines in Manchester; f. 2, “Wrigley says there is nothing gained by a crank instead of a water wheel because of the great weight they are obliged to use at the beam end” (this note undated, but the one below it using a different pen is 1812); f. 17 labelled Speed, “the greatest speed at which they can spin cotton is 15ft a min. or 12 feet a min the day through including stoppages”; f. 23 entitled Boiler, “Wrigley says it should be 4 times diameter of cylinder”, dated 1804; ff. 24–25 dated 1795 with these initials given “M.M.”, “The teeth of two wheels working together…”; ff. 34–35, Bobbin, “the relative length & diameter of a bobbin must be so proportioned…”; f. 38, Wheels continued from f. 24, “Perhaps the best general rule for the depth of teeth is to make the depth of the acting part 3/4 of the pitch”; f. 38 on strength of wheels, “Rule The square of the thickness of the tooth multiplied by its breadth will give the number of horse power that the wheel is adequate to work, if it move at a velocity of its surface of 2½ [?] feet p. second of time. If the velocity is greater or less, the power is proportionate — The best breadth of a tooth is six times its thickness”. See Marshall MS 200/57, ff. 24–25, “Theory of Wheels”. Hereafter the Marshall collection at The Brotherton Library is referenced simply as Marshall MS with the appropriate number. See the following site for the handlist of the collection: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/library/spcoll/handlists/006MS200_marshalls.pdf.

Barker Hannah , “‘Smoke cities’: Northern industrial towns in late Georgian England”, Urban history, xxxi (2004), 175–276; and for the political spokesman for this rising industrial class in Leeds see Thornton David , “Edward Baines, sr (1774–1848), provincial journalism and political philosophy in early nineteenth-century England”, Northern history, xl (2003), 2003–97.

Boulton Watt MSS , Birmingham City Library, Series I, Part 3 for extensive lists of steam engines being installed in the county of York from the 1780s onward, P6; cf. Series I, Part 7, Box 322, Reel 97, #79, Boulton in Leeds writing to Watt in Birmingham, 24 April 1802: “At Manchester the increase of Mills and Dwelling Houses is beyond all former times, not less than 8 to 10 thousand in the last two years. Everywhere full employment and great plenty. Hull is increasing rapidly, where they are beginning a new Dock. At York I do not observe the smallest change”.

For a good overview of the period see Connell E. J. Ward M. , “Industrial development, 1780–1914”, in Fraser Derek (ed.), A history of modern Leeds (Manchester, 1980), 142–76.

See Jacob Reid , op. cit. (ref. 1), on Manchester. See also Silliman Benjamin , Journal of travels in England, Holland and Scotland, 3rd edn (New Haven, 1820 [orig. pub. 1809]), 99, praising Manchester's patronage of science: “It is no small gratification to find a taste for science in a great manufacturing town, where the acquisition of property is the very business of life”.

We now know that the town possessed boarding schools for boys — As early as 1769 — That offered accounting, arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry and “the doctrine on mechanics with the theory and application of the mechanic powers”. See advertisements in the Leeds Mercury, 3 January 1769, 16 January 1770. There was a Commercial and Mathematical School on Boar Lane that taught natural philosophy in the late 1780s. In 1788 a Mr Burton gave a course for men and women in natural and experimental philosophy endorsed by Joseph Priestley. There is a flyer for the course housed at the Education Library, Hillary Place, Leeds, and I wish to thank its librarian Liz Lister for this information.

Bouton and Watt Papers, Series 1, Part 7, Box 322, Reel 97, Boulton to Watt, Leeds, 28 January 1794: “From the general success of Mess. Wormald & Co's great Engine — I have no doubt of several others being wanted here if business mends on a similar plan as they are endeavouring to manufacture from the wool to finished cloth in the one building — Which has not yet been done to any great extent. It caused a great bustle among the cloth makers who wish if possible to prevent it as they say merchants is becoming manufacturers. The cloth makers are a large body of men who all bring their cloth to a common hall for sale — Each cloth maker has workmen of their own and they in general have the wool [?] (i.e. carded) at one place, spun at the other … it is not the working men who are so much sett against it as their masters…”.

“Thoughts on the Industrial Revolution”, Jack Goldstone, George Mason University, Center for Global Policy Working Paper #2, 2005, p. 7. Here he is taking issue with the work of Nicholas Crafts and C. Knick Harley in particular.

Mokyr , The gifts of Athena (ref. 1).

Goldstone , op. cit. (ref. 14), 8.

Goldstone Jack A. , “Efflorescences and economic growth in world history: Rethinking the ‘rise of the West’ and the Industrial Revolution”, Journal of world history, xiii (2002), 323–89, p. 334.

See note three and other essays in the entire issue of Perspectives on science, xiii/4 (2005). I have hyphenated ‘techno-science’ precisely to distinguish it from any effort to collapse the technology into the science or vice-versa.

The Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, Special Collections, MS 18, notes made by W. Lindley on a “number of steam engines engaged in the different branches of manufacture in Leeds and its immediate vicinity”, March 1824, describe engines in the production of wool cloth (37), flax spinning (23), stuff manufacture (2), cotton (2), dying (25), crushing seed (12), machine making (14), manufacturing tobacco, paper making, potteries. See also Litton Pauline M. (ed.), “The journals of Sarah Mayo Parkes, 1815 and 1818”, Publications of the Thoresby Society, 2nd ser., xiii (Miscellany) (2003), 1–62, p. 3, where Parkes observes a water wheel used to move a hammer in Sheffield; p. 4, to dye blue woollen cloth at Wakefield, “most of the moveable apparatus is conducted by steam”; pp. 5–6, for an extensive description of the Wormald Gott factory where the steam engine “is the great moving power in this extensive factory” that employed machines to mix the wool with oil, to spin thread by steam driven machines (she claims that one man can do the work of 80); fulling “is very simple: The cloth is merely put into a wooden trough, to which two heavy wooden hammers are attached, that just fit into it, and each hammer works … all the vats for dyeing the cloth are boiled by steam, which save much expence and labour”. In Leeds (p. 13) she sees coal carriages moved by steam; p. 16 on woollen cloth dressed by machinery moved by steam.

Beatson Robert , An essay on the comparative advantages of vertical and horizontal wind-mills: Containing a description of an horizontal wind-mill and water-mill, upon a new construction (London and Edinburgh, 1798), 3–4.

That could be extrapolated out of Thackray Arnold , “Natural knowledge in cultural context: The Manchester mode”, American historical review, lxxiv (1974), 672–709.

For a general account of the Mechanics' Institutes in Britain, see Inkster Ian , “The social context of an educational movement: A revisionist approach to the English mechanics' institutes, 1820–1850”, in his Scientific culture and urbanisation in industrialising Britain (Ashgate, 1997).

See for example, Vince S. Rev. , A plan of a course of lectures on the principles of natural philosophy (Cambridge, 1793), 40, “The friction of a body does not continue the same when it has different surfaces applied to the plane on which it moves, but the smallest surface will have the least friction.” The British Library copy owned by Thomas Barber in 1800 (#1600/1154) has the following note: “some writers have asserted that friction is increased in the same body if its velocity be increased, but this is not the case, as appears from Mr. Vince's Experiments.” Found in the blank sheets after p. 44.

This phrase appears widely in the older literature but can be most readily accessed in Mathias Peter , “Who unbound Prometheus?”, in Mathias Peter (ed.), Science and society 1600–1900 (Cambridge, 1972).

Smail John , (ed.), The memorandum books of John Brearley (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2001), 13. See pp. 58–60 for Brearley's knowledge of pulleys, Archimedes screws; entries here cited range from 1758 to 1761.

A superb example of the kind of person I mean is found in John Smail, “Innovation and invention in the Yorkshire wool textile industry: A miller's tale”, in Hilaire-Pérez Liliane Gar&çon Anne-Françoise (eds), Les chemins de la nouveauté: Innover, inventer au regard de l'histoire (Paris, 2003), 313–29. Cf. for a good description of the millwright of the mid-eighteenth century Jenkins D. T. , The West Riding wool textile industry 1770–1835 (Pasold Research Fund Ltd (U.K.), 1975), 101–2, quoting Fairbairn.

An argument documented in my Scientific culture (ref. 1), and with Stewart Larry , Practical matter (ref. 1).

Desaguliers John , A course of experimental philosophy, 2nd edn, i and ii (London, 1745); Smeaton John , “An experimental examination of the quantity and proportion of mechanic power necessary to be employed in giving different degrees of velocity to heavy bodies from a state of rest”, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society, xlvi (London, 1777), 450–75; The John Rylands Library, Dalton MSS, no. 83, lecture notes dating from 1796 to 1818.

Marshall MSS, MS 200/57, dated 1790, ff. 34–35: Bobbin, “the relative length & diameter of a bobbin must be so proportioned that it will always be the same weight in proportion to the lever at which the thread is acting…. The central force being likewise in proportion to the quantity of matter, a bobbin of the size above described which would not spin 16 lea yarn at a greater velocity than 2000 revs. Would spin 36 lea yarn at a velocity of 3000 revs. A min. In that case the 36 lea ought to be of equal strength with the 16 lea, otherwise it would break the oftener.” Folio 36 has the date of 1805.

A similar transition in educational level has been argued for post-Civil War American textile industry, “for the postwar world of powered manufacture … sons would need more: An understanding of mechanical principles, capacity to innovate in design, an ability to coordinate production on a grander scale”. See Scranton Philip , “Learning manufacture: Education and shop-floor schooling in the family firm”, Technology and culture, xxvii (1986), 40–62, p. 46. To see a working engine recreated with its moving parts, http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/on-line/energyhall/theme_See%20the%20engines%20at%;20work.asp.

Turner William , A general introductory discourse, delivered, on Tuesday, Nov. 16, 1802 on the … plan of the new institution for public lectures on Natural Philosophy, Newcastle, [1802], 19–20, where it is also stated that one course will comprise “the history and exhibition of the best Machines dependent on these principles”. Cf. Banks John , A treatise on mills (London, 1795) and his On the power of machines (Kendal, 1803).

Here is Watt describing the operation of one of his engines in a Cornish mine, and I quote from a printed quarto sheet, late eighteenth century, entitled PROPOSALS to the Adventurers, Boulton and Watt. The original can be found at http://www.cornish-mining.org.uk/mintech/boulton_watt/volume11.htm, citation number AD1583/11/66, Method of Calculating tables for Wheal Maid 63 inch Cylinder; double 9 feet or 18 feet Stroke: The consumption by cylinders of different diameters, loaded to the same number of pounds per inch, going the same number and length of strokes per minute, and constructed equally well, will be as the square of their diameters. V. The two engines at Poldice consume 6924 bushels in 30 days; the squares of their diameters (60 and 66) are 3600 and 4356; the sum of these squares is 7956. To find the consumption of a 60 inch loaded to the average of these two, say, as 7956 (sum of the squares) is to 6924 bushels, so is 3600 (square 60) to 3131, the bushels which would be consumed in 30 days by a 60 inch cylinder, going six strokes per minute of five feet six inches long each, and loaded to 5, 4–10ths pounds per square inch. For Watt's scientific and technical education see Birmingham City Library, James Watt Papers, BPL, MS4/11, letters to his father, 1754–74.

Leeds University, The Brotherton Library, Special Collections, MS 18, “Number of steam engines engaged in the different branches of manufacture in Leeds and its immediate vicinity, from a survey of them made by W. Lindley in March 1824”. In 1851 at the Great Exhibition Leeds sent 134 exhibitors, led only by Manchester with 191, while Birmingham put forward a huge 230.

Litton , (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 19), 16.

Quoted in Morris R. J. , “The rise of James Kitson: Trade union and the Mechanics Institution, Leeds, 1826–1851”, Publications of the Thoresby Society, xv (1972), 185–6. See the original in Hill Frederic , National education: Its present state and prospects (London, 1836), ii/2, 220–1.

See The tenth report of the Keighley Mechanics' Institution, for the year ending April 4^th, 1836 with a list of the members, a catalogue of the books and apparatus (Keighley, 1836); this printed catalogue turns up in The Brotherton Library, Leeds University, Special Collections, Marriner MS 65/1. The institute was founded in 1825 and at times struggled.

[Anon.], Observations on woollen machinery (Leeds, 1803), 4; reproduced in The spread of machinery: Five pamphlets 1793–1806 (New York, 1972).

Marshall's rise is ably chronicled in Rimmer W. G. , Marshalls of Leeds, flax-spinners 1788–1886 (Cambridge, 1960); and see Heaton H. , “Benjamin Gott and the Industrial Revolution in Yorkshire”, The economic history review, iii (1931–32), 45–66, pp. 52–53. Rimmer did not explore in any detail the linkage between the natural philosophical and chemical work undertaken by Marshall and his industrial practices. He did recognize that Marshall had a serious interest in chemistry (pp. 50–53); he also missed the important 1790 notebook. The electronic version of the British archival guide [A2A] simply picks up the typing error in the original and lists it as from 1750; in January 2006 the entry for MS 200/42 can be found under “Booth”.

The Leeds Intelligencer, xxxviii, no. 1894 (14 December 1790), tells us that “Booth's course of lectures on natural and experimental philosophy, astronomy, chemistry … illustrated by … apparatus, which has cost upwards of four thousand pounds … will consist of 15 lectures at the cost of one guinea, 3 lectures a week, will begin if 40 subscribers can be found … his apparatus weighs up to 7 tons … he can only give one course as he has obligations in Birmingham … subscriptions can be had from him or at the bookstore of Mr Binns”. There was a John Booth who also lectured in Yorkshire in this period but there is no evidence that he was a follower of Priestley — As was this Mr Booth — Nor did he announce or advertise any lectures at the time when Marshall attended them.

Marshall MS 200/42, “Philosophical Lectures and Extracts”, Booth's Philosophical Lectures December 1790, Lecture 14, Miscellany, “Some particulars relating to various subjects which were before omitted. Water Wheels Steam Engines”.

Robinson Eric , “An English Jacobin: James Watt, Junior, 1769–1848”, Cambridge historical journal, xi (1955), 349–55, pp. 354–5, mentions that Benjamin Booth, itinerant lecturer, was also brought up on charges of sedition as was Thomas Walker in 1792–93; Booth was later released.

On the family's association with Mill Hill see Rimmer , Marshalls of Leeds (ref. 38), 14. For background on this Unitarian link to science see Raymond Jean Pickstone John V. , “The natural sciences and the learning of the English Unitarians”, in Smith Barbara (ed.), Truth, liberty, religion: Essays celebrating two hundred years of Manchester College (Oxford, 1986), 127–64, pp. 134–5. On Priestley in Leeds see Schofield Robert E. , The Enlightenment of Joseph Priestley: A study of his life and work from 1733 to 1773 (University Park, PA, 1997), chaps. 7–11.

The Institution of Civil Engineers, London, MS Society of Civil Engineers, Treasurer's minutes and accounts, 1793–1821, meeting record of “Smeatonians”; and The Brotherton Library, Leeds University, Special Collections, MS 194/14.

See my Scientific culture (ref. 1), chap. 5.

The Leeds Intelligencer, xxxviii, no. 1894 (14 December 1790). This Mr. Booth could be the same Benjamin Booth, labelled as “a labourer” in Barrell John , Imagining the King's death: Figurative treason, fantasies of regicide 1793–9 (Oxford, 2000), 171–9.

Birmingham City Library, James Watt MSS, Smeaton to Boulton and Watt, 5 February 1778. Cf. “A small working model of a steam-engine all in brass … £23 2s. 0d” and “A Complete copy of Boulton & Watts most improved engine with the boiler and apparatus complete … £100”, found in A catalogue of optical, mathematical, and philosophical instruments, made and sold by Jones W. Jones S. , Lower Holborn (London, 1837), 13; in British Library copy bound with Wilkinson C. H. , An analysis of a course of lectures on the principles of natural philosophy (London, 1799). There is some suggestion that as early as the 1730s Desaguliers was building models at home; see Stewart Larry , The rise of public science: Rhetoric, technology, and natural philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750 (Cambridge, 1992), 229.

Victoria and Albert Museum, London, model of a rotative steam engine, about 1800; mahogany frame with brass and iron fittings. Scale 1:12; made in Britain by an unidentified modelmaker; height: 93.5 x width: 90 x depth: 41.6 inches. This model is similar to the early rotative steam engines first developed by James Watt (1736–1819) and Matthew Boulton (1728–1809) in the 1780s. It was made by an unidentified engineering apprentice in about 1800.

Young Thomas , A course of lectures on natural philosophy and the mechanical arts (London, 1807), plate 24.

Walker A. , Analysis of a course of lectures in natural and experimental philosophy, 11th edn (London, [1799]). F. Hardie tells us that he too had apparatus at his experimental philosophic lecture room that could be seen for a shilling: Hardie F. , Syllabus of a course of lectures … at his experimental philosophic lecture room and theatre of rational amusement, Pantheon, Oxford St., London (London, [1800]), statement from the title page. The advertisement on the back page for Adam Walker's lectures in March says that he will devote one lecture to hydrostatics and hydraulics with the Boulton & Watt engine figuring prominently.

The Leeds Intelligencer, xxxviii, no. 1894 (14 December 1790). The advertisement a week later says that “he cannot do it for less than 40 people”. On Dec. 28 we are told that the lectures will commence in the ensuing week, 2 nights a week in Mr Hodgson's large room at the Academy. The first week will present pneumatics then hydrostatics.

I owe this point to Stewart Larry , “Laboratory spaces and industrial practice, 1750–1800”, unpublished paper delivered to the History of Science Society annual meeting, Minneapolis, November 2005.

Dalhousie University, Halifax, Dinwiddie MS 2–276, notebook entitled “Mechanics”, n.f., dated 9 June 1787, where he tells us that he watched at the Royal Society “a new method for converting a circular into a reciprocating motion”. Made available through the generosity of Larry Stewart.

All these notes and experiments are contained in sections of MS 2–276 labelled “experiments” and “instruments”.

Another point owed to Larry Stewart, citing Watson Richard , Chemical essays (Cambridge, 1781), ii, 39–40.

Marshall MS 200/53, “Experiments on spinning tow from June to October 1788”, nos. 1–17, not foliated; for example, “From the above experiment it appears that flax will not spin with rollers the common way because the fibers will not stick together so much as to hand forward from one roller to another especially at such distances as the length of the fiber requires them to be. It will be spun best from a sliver drawn from the heckle after the same manner as worsted if that be practicable”. The trial and error work of Matthew Murray is noted here throughout. See also MS 200/55, vol. i, “Bleaching”, which contains Marshall's notes on every major chemist of the day, but frequently without book or page cited: Berthollet , Encyclopédie méthodique, Ainsworth, Lavoisier. In a note dated 1800 we find an account of Chaptal's vapour bleaching; f. 2 recounts Berthollet's method of bleaching by oxygenated muriatic acid, translated, we are told, in the Repertory of Arts from the Annales de chimie: “when it has spent its power, it is common muriatic acid, the coloring particles having taken away its oxygen.” For the next generation and similar notations see Marshall MS 200/31, I (someone has written that this appears to be in the hand of John Marshall) and II, 30 October 1825, “Proposed experiments during James's absence”. Notes on Marshall's chemical reading also found in MS 200/42 and include notes on Scheele's Chemical essays, p. 92; Waltin's Chemical Lectures 1804 [name could be Martin], agriculture; a note on Stonehenge as an ancient observatory; from Leslie on Heat 8vo — 1804, “Light is heat in a state of emission”, “The same portion of heat raises the temperature of ice 10 degrees, water 9, steam 572 [?]”; Dr Moyle's lectures 1805 on the atmosphere, lightening, rivers, the ocean; a section labelled geology, combustible fossils; a note stating that a grain of hydrogen explodes with a force of 500 TT [? tons]; notes labelled Leslie on Heat 8vo. 1804; then notes on various books about travel. Also present are notes on an item in the Phil. trans. on geology and archaeology of Lincolnshire; notes on the sea at the equator and its elevation; South America; Coal; Hutton's theory on formation of peat. Further notes are on Bruce vol. 3; Helm's travels in south America; 1809 Barrow's voyage to China; De Luc's Elements of geology, 1809; Cuvier as discussed in the Edinburgh Review, 1811.

For a list of Dalton's lectures see Thackray Arnold , John Dalton: Critical assessments of his life and science (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 108–12, which in 1805 included lectures on matter, motion and mechanic principles; hydrostatics, pneumatics, as well as hydraulic and pneumatic instruments; electricity and galvanism, magnetism, optics, etc. There were also lectures on mixed elastic fluids and the atmosphere that ended with astronomy, the solar system, eclipses, laws of motion of the planets explained by the whirling table, tides, and system of the universe.

Marshall MS 200/42, “Philosophical Lectures and Extracts, Booth's Philosophical Lectures, December 1790”, from Lecture 1.

Ibid. This manuscript is not foliated.

Ibid.

Ibid., Lecture 2.

Ibid., Lecture 5 on hydraulicks.

Ibid., Lecture 5, “3. In the clack or valve … the very best possible construction is the mitre clack — A working model of Dr. Franklin's contrivance for drawing water by a hair rope was exhibited & proved not to answer — A model of a pump invented by Mr Booth was shewn which pumped the water by a continued circular motion. A model of a pump which made a stroke drained water both by the piston's ascending & descending — A model of a machine for raising a quantity of water 3 feet high by means of a small stream of water equal to 78 [?] of the water raised falling 30 feet … the piece of wood then falls to the bottom & raises a quantity of water equal to its own weight at the other end of a beam” and on the next page, “Newton attributed the tide on the opposite side of the earth from the moon to the solid part of the earth being more attracted than the water on the opposite side & being as it were drawn away from it. Ferguson ascribes it to the centrifugal force arising from the earth's moving round its common center of gravity with the moon. That center of gravity is abt 2000 miles from the surface of the earth”. In discussing valve of the pump he notes that vibration decreases velocity. Lecture 10 is on pneumatick chemistry with a long discussion of phlogiston theory and its errors. Lectures 11 and 12 are on electricity: “electric matter is a fluid sui generis — It follows the law of all other fluids in endeavouring to keep up an equilibrium in all its parts — All bodies more or less contain a portion of this matter & that portion may be increased or diminished.” Then Dr Moyes on Electricity — Applications are discussed and these are entirely medical; also how to deploy lightening rods to protect a house, proper distance between the rods, etc.

Ibid., Lecture 5 on hydraulicks.

Ibid., Lecture 13.

Ibid., “From Leslie on Heat 8vo — 1804 Light is heat in a state of emission. The same portion of heat raises the temperature of ice 10 degrees, water 9, steam 572 [? Symbol unclear]”.

Marshall MS 200/57, Notebook c. 1790, opening pages list all items alphabetically. Folio 1 is entitled “Steam Engine” and gives a list of engines at work in the region with all of their specifics and the list is continued on f. 27; undated, these pages including some engines in Manchester; f. 2–27 cited in ref. 7. In ff. 6–7 we have lists of names of Mechanicks, e.g., Wrigley Joshua , erector of Steam Engine & Cotton Machinery — Man [Manchester]; then spindle makers, steel burners, roller makers.

Rimmer , Marshalls of Leeds (ref. 38), 125.

Marshall MS 200/57, Notebook c. 1790, f. 38 labelled Strength of wheels, “To find the strength necessary for any given power—Rule The square of the thickness…” and cited in ref. 7.

Ibid., f. 17 labelled Speed: “the greatest speed at which they can spin cotton is 15ft a min. or 12 feet a min the day through including stoppages”.

Marshall MS 500/57, Notebook c. 1790, ff. 24–25. See similar points being made by Rev. Vince S. , A plan of a course of lectures on the principles of natural philosophy (Cambridge, 1793), 40: “The friction of a body does not continue the same when it has different surfaces applied to the plane on which it moves, but the smallest surface will have the least friction.” In a British Library copy of Vince's book, owned in 1800 by Thomas Barber of Cambridge (call number 1600/1154), the student's ms notes read in part “Some Writers have asserted that Friction is increased in the same body if its velocity be increased, but this is not the case, as appears from Mr Vince's Experiments”, found in blank sheets after p. 44.

Marshall MS 200/57, ff. 34–35. Here we find notations on lectures remarkably similar to Booth's; the following appears in the first lecture: “If any two weights balance each other when hung from a straight lever, they will be to each other inversely as their distances from the fulcrum.” The same is found in Vince, op. cit. (ref. 70), 7. These lectures concerned in this order: Mechanics, hydrostatics, optics, magnetism, and astronomy.

Vince , op. cit. (ref. 70), 9: “In a fixed pulley, the power is equal to the weight”.

Marshall MS 200/57, Notebook, dated 1790, but notes continue in later years, and this one on f. 36 is dated 1805.

Cited in Rimmer , Marshalls of Leeds (ref. 38), 29.

Ibid., 32, from Marshall's ms notebook, “experiments”. See also MS 200/53, “experiments on spinning tow from June to October 1788”.

The repertory of arts and manufactures: Consisting of original communications, specifications or patent inventions…, xi (London, 1799), 309–14. I owe this reference to Murray's work to Larry Stewart.

As cited in ref. 7, Marshall MS 200/57, f. 38, on the breadth of the tooth.

Marshall MS 200/55, f. 2. For a similar discussion of oxygenated muriatic acid see Nicholson William , A dictionary of chemistry (London, 1795), 209, entry under bleaching of linens.

Marshall MS 200/55, f. 21, March 1798, “we began to try experiments with the bleaching liquor … after procedures done first by Ainsworth working on cotton”. Discussed briefly in Rimmer , Marshalls of Leeds (ref. 38), 52.

Marshall MS 200/55, ff. 63–64.

Marshall MS 200/31 (I), and (II), f. 15.

The Brotherton Library, Gott MSS, MS 193/2, letters from Boulton & Watt, Peter Ewart, James Lawson, John Rennie; MS 193/74–84, copies of letters from Boulton & Watt that are now housed at the Birmingham City Library and are also available on microfilm.

Gott MSS, MS 193/3, f. 98, letter of 5 May 1802, from Davison to Gott asking him if he would give him an opinion of his steam engine.

Gott MSS, MS 117, Bean Ing Mill Notebook of Prices and Processes [c. 108–25], “experiments made in the Dye house Park Mill, 9 Sept. 1800”.

Gott MSS, MS 193/3, f. 98, letter of Davison to Gott, 5 May 1802, asking him if he would go with him to give his opinion of their steam engine to Goodwin, “but if you can't here are queries in writing”. On the engine and its many uses for scribbling, carding, turning shafts and gearings, and stones to grind dyewood, see Heaton , op. cit. (ref. 38), 52–53.

Gott MSS, MS 193/3, f. 97, Gott to Bramah, 29 March 1809.

Gott MSS, MS 193/3, f. 94.

Ibid., f. 97, Gott to Bramah from Leeds, 29 March 1809, on his hydro-mechanical press: “We have from your letter of the 25^th instant that the sale and general adoption of your patent presses have been prevented by unfavorable representations respecting the merits & utility of the one you erected for us … we must … tell you that we look after every operation of the work ourselves, and if we had experienced any advantage from the use of your press, we should have insisted on those men working it, or we should have appointed others in their places who would have been obedient….” See Heaton , op. cit. (ref. 38), 58 who takes a dimmer view of Gott's success in putting the machine to work.

Gott MSS, MS 193/3, f. 98, letter of 5 May 1802, Davison to Gott.

Leeds University, The Brotherton Library, Special Collections, MS Dep. 1975/1/6, 7 May 1819.

Thackrah Charles , An introductory discourse. Delivered to the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, April 6, 1821 (Leeds, 1821), 23–24.

Marshall MS 200/63, unfoliated. For their knowledge of the Lake District and the relationship between Jane Marshall and Dorothy Wordsworth, see de Selincourt Ernest (ed.), The letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, 2nd edn rev. by Shaver Chester L. , i: The early years, 1787–1805 (Oxford, 1967).