REFERENCES
- Unless otherwise stated or obvious, the data for this paper is extracted from the original patent applications in the British patent system, each of which for cited years has been sighted and summarised on an EXCEL spreadsheet system. All other data unless mentioned otherwise is derived from systematic data in The Commissioner of Patents Journal, annually from 1852 to 1883. For more detail of these and other sources see below Inkster 1990 and 2000. The basic research was originally supported by two research grants from NTU.
- Examples of work of potential interest to engineering historians include F.D. Prager, 'A history of intellectual property from 1545 to 1787', Journal of the Patent Office Society, vol. 26 (1944), pp. 711–60; A.R. Pred, Urban Growth and the Circulation of Information. The United States System of Cities 1790–1840 (Harvard University Press, 1973); Harry Dutton, The Patent System and Inventive Activity during the Industrial Revolution (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1984); Christine MacLeod, Inventing the Industrial Revolution. The English Patent System, 1660–1800 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988); Pamela 0. Long, 'Invention, authorship, "intellectual property" and the origin of patents', Technology and Culture, vol. 32 (1991), pp. 846–84; Inventions, innovations et espionnage du savoir technique dans l'Europe moderne, eds Marco Belfanti and Fabio Giusberti, special issue, History and Technology, XVI, 3 (2000); Liliane Hilaire Perez, L'invention technique au siècle des Lumières (Albin Michel, Paris, 2000). Work by Ian Inkster on patents has also embraced the themes of technology transfer, relations between artisanal and engineering patenting, and investigations of the intellectual milieu of patentees, and this includes 'The Ambivalent Role of Patents in Technology Development', Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society, vol. 2 (1982), pp. 181–90; 'Intellectual Dependency and the Sources of Invention. Britain and the Australian Technological System in the Nineteenth Century', History of Technology, vol. 12 (1990), pp. 40–64; 'Technology Transfer in the Great Climacteric: Machinofacture and International Patenting in World Development circa 1850-1914', History of Technology, vol. 21 (1999), pp. 87–106; `Machinofacture and Technical Change: The Patent Evidence' in Ian Inkster et al., The Golden Age. Essays in English Social and Economic History, 1850–1870 (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2000), pp. 121–39; and 'Artisans de la découverte. Modèles Britanniques et Internationaux d'Innovation Technologique 1700-1914', International Symposium Artszans industrie. Nouvelles revolutions (Paris, France, June 2001).
- Eric Hopkins, The Rise of the Manufacturing Town. Birmingham and the Industrial Revolution (Sutton Publishing, Stroud, 1998), chapters 2–4. For the inventive context see R.B. Prosser, Bir-mingham Inventors and Inventions (Birmingham, 1881); Maxine Berg, 'Commerce and creativity in eighteenth century Birmingham', in Markets and Manufacturers in Eighteenth Century England, ed. Berg (Routledge, London, 1991), pp. 173–204.
- Both highly dependent technological systems in areas of recent white settlement with either strong commercial or colonial relations with one overwhelming industrial power — see Inkster, Technology and Industrialisation (Ashgate, London, 1998), pp. 5–8 (1) and essays IV—VI. Patents do not at all reflect rankings of nations in terms of GDP per head — for instance, in such terms in 1870 the top ranked nations were Australia, UK, Belgium, Netherlands and Switzerland. So in the study period patenting was not a function of wealth per se but rather of level of manu-facturing industrialisation, which is what would be predicted on the assumption that patenting was a significant technological activity and measurement.
- Report of the Commissioners on the Working of the Laws relating to Letters Patent for Inventions, Both Houses (London, House of Commons, 1865), p. 152.
- Symptomatically, Caro had previously been employed working on aniline dyes as chemist and colourist to Roberts, Dale and Co. in Manchester: see E. Homburg, 'The emergence of research laboratories in the dyestuffs industry, 1870-1900', The British Journal for the History of Science, vol. 25 (1992), pp. 91–111; C. Reinhardt, 'An instrument of corporate strategy: The central research laboratory at BASF 1868-1890', in The Chemical Industry in Europe 1850–1914, eds Homburg, A.S. Travis and H.G. Schroter (London, Dordrecht, 1998), pp. 239–59.
- 'The Coal Tar Colour Industry in Germany and England', Nature (12 December 1901), pp. 138 —39; L.F. Haber, The Chemical Industry during the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1958), especially p. 130 passim.
- It is worth noting that two authoritative historians in this field have generalised on the basis of their own and others' research that the new corporate research laboratories in fact 'preserved strong elements of testing, quality control, and investigations directed at the protection of pat-ents, rather than a preoccupation with the development of new products and processes, a stress on tactical commercial-mindedness that distinguished them from universities, polytechnics and government institutions' — see R. Fox and A. Guagnini, Laboratories, workshops and sites. Con-cepts and practices of research in industrial Europe, 1800–1914 (Office for History of Science and Technology, University of California, Berkeley, 1999), quote p. 149.
- The other British firms were Claus and Ree (90), Brooke, Simpson and Spitler (7), and W.G. Thompson (2): see Haber, ibid., pp. 126f, and F. Rose, Chemical Instruction in Germany and the Growth and Present Conditions of the German Chemical Industry (Diplomatic and Consular Reports, London, 1901).
- Japan Year Book, various years 1904–16; Patent and Trade Mark Review various years 1912–22; Bureau des Brevets d'Invention, Lois concernant la protection de la propriété industrielle dans L'Empire du Japan (exposition Universalle de 1900 Paris, Paris, 1900–01).
- Ian Inkster, Japanese Industrialisation. Historical and cultural perspectives (Routledge, London, 2001), especially chapters 3 and 4.
- Simon Sharma, The Embarrassment of Riches. An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (Coffins, London, 1988); Urban Achievement in Early Modern Europe. Golden Ages in Antwerp, Amsterdam and London, eds Patrick 0, Brien et al. (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001).
- For discussion of public policy attempts at the artificial creation of innovative urban sites see especially Sheridan Tatsuno, The Technopolis Strategy (Prentice Hall, New York, 1986); T. Morris Suzuki, Beyond Computopia (Kegan Paul International, London, 1988); Ian Inkster, Clever City (Sydney University Press and Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1991).
- It must be acknowledged that a prime objective is to differentiate more general engineering skills and training from the industrial skills of trade apprentices, which we may designate approxi-mately 'artisan'. For this period, the Engineer category includes all self-designated engineers, mechanics, wrights and millwrights, chemists and foremen. Artisan embraces all patentees who define themselves in terms of their trade apprenticeship, other than the engineers.
- For the historical details of which see Metropolis and Province. Science in British Culture 1780–1850, eds Inkster and Jack Morrell (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1983), for instance chapters 1, 5, 7 and 8, and Ian Inkster, Scientific Culture and Urbanisation in Industrialising Britain (Ashgate 1997), especially chapters 4, 5, 9, 10 and 11.
- For Britain in particular see James B. Jefferys, The Story of the Engineers (Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1945); Charles More, Skill and the English Working Class 1870–1914 (Croom Helm, London, 1980); and R.A. Buchanan, The Engineers: A History of the Engineering Profession in Britain 1750–1914 (London, 1989).
- Nathan Rosenberg, Perspectives on Technology (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1975); idem., Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1982).
- Ubiquitous because widely spread through self-serving self-reference The label of course cap-tured many merchants and some large manufacturers, and as the patent system became more formalised the category shrunk. Local research also serves to reduce this label to its true component parts.
- William Spence, Patentable Invention and Scientific Evidence (London, Stevens and Norton, 1851), pp. x—xii, 14–17.
- William Spence, A Treatise on Principles Relating to the Specification of a Patent for Invention (V. and R. Stevens and G.S. Norton, London, 1847), p. 73.
- Newton's London Journal of Arts and Science, X (1859), pp. 129–34, 257–63.
- French inventors used the services of the leading London patent agents in profusion, flooding the portfolios of agents such as W.R. Lake of the International Patent Office, Southampton Buildings, who through his other firm Haseltine, Lake and Co. was the largest in the country during the 1870s, A.M. Clark of Chancery Lane, and H.A. Bonneville of the British and Foreign Patent Office, Piccadilly.
- Commissioner of Patents Journal, II, (July—December, 1878), pp. 990–92.
- Report of the Commissioners on the Working of the Laws Relating to Letters Patent forInventions, Both Houses of Parliament, (House of Commons, London, 1865), p. 5.
- Report of the Council of the Inventors' Institute (London, 1863). This institute was designed to act as a counterweight to Ricardian theory, which tended towards an argument that free markets were best in all possible contexts, and that patents represented a restriction on the free market for technology and technological information. In fact, patents helped to define that market.
- The Inventors Institute, Report of the Council of the Institute made to the First Annual Meeting, 14 May 1863 (London, 1863), quote p. 7.
- Small groups such as the London Association of Foremen Engineers (founded in 1852) were designed as both benefit societies and forums for practical information, and were normally led by successful patentees or engineers — in this case by the ever-active Newton and by W. Keytes, manager of the Royal Gun Factories at Woolwich.
- In London by the early 1860s these included the South Kensington Museum, Museum of Practi-cal Geology (Jermyn Street), Museum of Economic Botany (Kew Gardens), Industrial Museum (Crystal Palace), Museum of the Pharmaceutical Society (Bloomsbury Square), East India House Museum (Leadenhall Street), Economic Museum (Perryn House, Twickenham), and the Museum of the Botanical Society (Regents Park).
- Sheffield Mercury, 21 June, 16 August 1834; 21 October 1837.
- Report from the Select Committee on Scientific Instruction together with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence (House of Commons, London, 1868), in addition, the Schools of Design had been established in 1837 under recommendation of a select committee of the House of Commons in 1835, but were put under the Department of Practical Art from 1852.
- Ian Inkster, 'Association, provincialisme et sociologie du progrès technique: le cas de Grande-Bretagne, c. 1780-1914', Colloque Historique, Société d'encouragement pour l'Industrie Nationale, Paris, France, 8–9 November 2001.
- Aubrey Silberson, 'The Economic Importance of Patents', Technology and Economic Progress, ed. in Silberson (Macmillan, London, 1989), pp. 155–80, quote p. 178.
- This is the major assumption, from which all else follows by calculation. If the assumption is to be seriously disputed, the critic must go beyond a bit of anecdotal evidence as to frivolous inventors or inventions. It might be remembered that at a time of no or contentious qualifications, mechan-ics, engineers and small producers had to make a name in some way, a name that was worth a commercial value. If in some instances they did this through patenting of a form that we now see as trivial, this does not remove the case. Again, trivial patents in the technical sense (that is, involving a minor alteration, such as a small change in the strength of a chemical solution) might have been of real value in reducing the cost of applications, removing a monopoly of supply, or allowing production with different or 'inferior' quality of raw material inputs — an excellent example is the patent incrementalism attached to the cyanide process for gold production in the last years of the century, for which in summary see Ian Inkster, Technology and Industrialisation (Ashgate, London, 1998), pp. 5–8 (I), and for the details, Jan Todd, Colonial Technology. Science and the Transfer of Innovation to Australia (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995).
- For an example of such reasoning in the contemporary engineering literature see that of Dr J. Ephraim, nos 36 and 37 for 1901 of Zeitschrift fur angewandte Chemie.
- Chemische Zeitschrift, 14 May 1890, calculations from data at p. 303.
- Dingler's Polytechnisches Journal (1894), calculated from tables and data pp. 160–64.
- Alfred Marshall, Industry and Trade, A Study of Industrial Technique and Business Organisation (Macmillan, London, 1919), quote pp. 206,325.