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E-book
Author Jeremy, David J., author.

Title Transatlantic industrial revolution : the diffusion of textile technologies between Britain and America, 1790-1830s / David J. Jeremy
Published Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press, [1981]
©1981

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Description 1 online resource (xvii, 384 pages) : illustrations
Summary Annotation Winner of the 1980 Edelstein Prize given by the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT). and Winner of the John H. Dunning Prize in U.S. History sponsored by the American Historical Association. The social impact of a technical innovation - however great its intrinsic significance or originality - is entirely dependent on the extent and rate of its diffusion into practical life. The study of this diffusion - technology transfer - is a recent historical endeavor, but one that has already brought new understanding to past transformations of society and has important implications for future developments, especially in countries now emerging into the industrialized phase. Jeremy's book is central in this line of inquiry. It traces the transatlantic flow of a technology - textile manufacture, one of the first of the mechanized industries - from Britain, the fermenter of the Industrial Revolution and the world's most advanced country, to the post-colonial United States, still an isolated agrarian-mercantile society. But the author shows that by the early 19th century, this flow of technology was already moving in both directions across the Atlantic. The book examines the transfer of four specific technologies: cotton spinning, powerloom weaving, calico printing, and woollen manufacturing. These technologies all made successful transatlantic crossings in spite of the institutional and technical barriers to transfer that Jeremy describes, including industrial secretiveness, the English patent search system, the paucity of technical publications, the prohibitory laws, artisan resistance to technica change, variations in local technical traditions, and changes in the pace and direction of invention. Transatlantic Industrial Revolutionis firmly based on modern economic theory. It is well illustrated with halftones and line drawings and its conclusions are by numerous primary sources, including British patents and American passenger (immigration) lists, customs documented records, and the manuscript version of the U.S. 1820 Census of Manufacturers, which yielded new estimates of the extent of America's textile expansion
Notes Based on the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--University of London, 1978
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 340-356) and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Textile industry -- Technological innovations -- United States -- History
Textile industry -- Technological innovations -- Great Britain -- History
Diffusion of innovations -- United States -- History
Diffusion of innovations -- Great Britain -- History
Technology transfer -- History
Diffusion of innovations
Technology transfer
Textile industry -- Technological innovations
Great Britain
United States
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 0262100223
9780262100229