Monday, April 19, 2010
Where it all began...
Your correspondent on holiday in Ironbridge in Shropshire. This is where Abraham Darby first managed to smelt iron with coke (rather than charcoal), an invention that has as much claim as any to have started the Industrial Revolution.
Though, in reality, that revolution started more or less simultaneously in many places in England, you really get a sense of the historical significance of it here. In particular you can see how, in what is now a sleepy small town, the late eighteenth century must have felt just like Silicon Valley did in the 1980s.
In the reconstructed village set sixty years or so later at Blists Hill just up the road, they have a number of working stationary steam engines - my third favourite machines after tall ships and (of course) RepRap.
Definitely worth a visit.
Labels: industrial revolution
