Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; List of illustrations; 1. Introduction: inventors and other heroes; 2. The new Prometheus; 3. The inventor's progress; 4. The apotheosis of James Watt; 5. Watt, inventor of the Industrial Revolution; 6. 'What's Watt?' The radical critique; 7. The technological pantheon; 8. Heroes of the Pax Britannica; 9. Debating the patent system; 10. The workers' heroes; 11. Maintaining the industrial spirit; 12. Science and the disappearing inventor; Epilogue. The Victorian legacy; Bibliography; Index.
An innovative study of why inventors rose to heroic stature and popular acclaim in Victorian Britain.
Christine MacLeod is Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the School of Humanities, University of Bristol. She is the author of Inventing the Industrial Revolution: the English Patent System, 1660-1800 (1988).
'[MacLeod's] book is a masterpiece of history.' Nuncius: Journal of
the History of Science
'In this interesting and valuable book, Christine MacLeod has
chosen the inventor to reflect on British national identity, an
individual she describes as an improbable hero. [She] has written
an illuminating account of the way in which culture, economics, and
politics converged to give to the inventor a brief hegemonic
interlude.' Richard A. Cosgrove, University of Arizona
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