Ideologically technical: Illustration, automation and spinning cotton around the middle of the nineteenth century

Journal of Design History

Volumn 11, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 275-293

  Purbrick, Louise ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Automation; Division of labour; Geometry; Ideology; Self acting mule; Technical illustration

Indexed keywords

EID: 17544369801     PISSN: 09524649     EISSN: 17417279     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jdh/11.4.275     Document Type: Review

References (52)

1. P. J. Booker, The History of Engineering Drawing, Chatto & Windus, 1979;
2. K. Baynes & F. Pugh, The Art of the Engineer, Lutterworth Press, 1981;
3. S. Lambert, Drawing: Technique and Purpose, Trefoil, 1984.
4. Quoted in A. Ure, The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain, Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1970, first published 1834, p. 199.
5. P. Hudson, The Industrial Revolution, Edward Arnold, 1992, reviews recent contributions to the debate about industrial development.
6. R. Gray, The Factory Question and Industrial England 1830-1860, Cambridge University Press, 1996. See Introduction, especially pp. 1-4.
7. T. Brueland, 'Industrial conflict as a source of technical innovation: three cases', Economy and Society, vol. 11, no. 2, 1982, pp. 91-121;
8. W. Lazonick, 'Industrial relations and technical change: the case of the self-acting mule', Cambridge Journal of Economics, vol. 3, 1979, pp. 231-62;
9. W. Lazonick, Competitive Advantage on the Shop Floor, Harvard University Press, 1990, pp. 78-114;
10. M. Friefeld, 'Technical change and the "self-acting mule": a study of skill and the sexual division of labour', Social History, vol. 11, 1986, pp. 319-43.
11. Brueland, op. cit. , p. 93.
12. Lazonick, op. cit. , pp. 241-2.
13. For explanations of the quandrant, see H. Catling, The Spinning Mule, David & Charles, 1970, pp. 75-82;
14. H. Catling, 'The development of the spinning mule', Textile History, vol. 9, 1978, pp. 46-8;
15. W. English, The Textile Industry. An Account of the Early Inventions of Spinning, Weaving and Knitting Machines, Longman, 1969, p. 177.
16. S. Smiles, Industrial Biography: Iron Workers and Tool Makers, David & Charles, 1863, p. 269.
17. Catling, 1970, op. cit. , p. 84;
18. Catling, 1978, op. cit. , p. 49.
19. Mary Freifeld argues that male mule spinners retained their position on the self-actors because the knowledgeable adjustments of the quandrant nut amounted to a 'reconstitution of craft skill' whereas William Lazonick believes there was 'no technical basis' for men's continued presence, rather it suited cotton capitalists for them to keep their supervisory functions.
20. E. Leigh, The Science of Modern Cotton Spinning, Palmer & Howe, 1873, p. 244;
21. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. VII, CON-DEM, 11th edn. , p. 306.
22. British Parliamentary Papers, Report from the Select Committee on the law relative to Patents for Invention, 1851, Irish University Press, Inventions, General, Volume 1, p. 193. The Select Committee sat, in part, due to pressure for patent law reform arising from the public display of inventions at the Great Exhibition. Further details of Richard Roberts' inventions and his attempt to influence patent law are contained in a biographical article: H. W. Dickinson, 'Richard Roberts, his life and inventions', Transactions of the Newcomen Society, vol. 25, 1945-7, pp. 123-37.
23. A. Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures, Frank Cass, 1967, first published 1835, pp. 366-68.
24. Edward Baines and, somewhat later, Samuel Smiles make the same point. Both claim that success of the self-actor was that it made cotton capitalists 'independent' of mule spinners. E. Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain, Frank Cass, 1966, first published 1835, p. 208
25. and Smiles, op. cit. , p. 268.
26. Brueland, op. cit. , p. 104, uses the term weapon and it derives from Karl Marx.
27. See K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, International, 1967, pp. 435-6.
28. Brueland, op. cit. , p. 104.
29. R. Guest, Arkwright Compendious History of the Cotton Manufacture; with a Disapproval of the Claim of Sir Richard to the Invention of its Ingenious Machinery, Joseph Pratt, 1823. Guest's images are more important, for my purposes, than his argument.
30. Leigh, op. cit. , Preface.
31. W. Fairbairn, Treatise on Mills and Millwork, Part I, Longman, 1861, pp. v-vii.
32. Ken Baynes and Francis Pugh succinctly summarize this process. Baynes & Pugh, op. cit. , p. 11.
33. The Engineer and Machinist's Drawing Book: A Complete Course of Instruction for the Practical Engineer, Blackie & Son, London, 1847
34. Preface. Rafael Cardosa Denis discusses the significance of drawing instruction in R. Cardosa Denis, 'The educated eye and the industrial hand: art and design instruction for the working classes in mid-Victorian Britain', unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art/University of London, 1995.
35. The Technical Educator: An Encyclopaedia of Technical Education, Vol. I, Cassell, London, 1868, Introduction.
36. Baynes and Pugh suggest industrial drawing texts 'deliberately set out to codify parts of the work process which had hitherto been the sole preserve of the experienced craftsman. ' Baynes & Pugh, op. cit. , p. 130.
37. R. Willis, 'Machines and tools for working in metal, wood and other materials', Lectures on the Results of the Great Exhibition of 1851, David Bogue, London, 1852, p. 300.
38. See, for example, Tallis's, History and Description of the Crystal Palace and the Exhibition of the World's Industry in 1851, Vol. I-III, Tallis, London & New York, 1851, pp. 51-5.
39. Adrian Forty identifies the Cole circle account of mechanical causes of bad design as a myth. A. Forty, Objects of Desire, Thames & Hudson, 1986, p. 43.
40. Willis, op. cit. , pp. 293 and 295.
41. C. Tomlinson, The Cyclopaedia of Useful Arts, Mechanical and Chemical, Manufactures, Mining and Engineering, Vol. 1, George Virtue, London, 1852, p. cxl.
42. Roberts Specification, No. 5138, 29 March, 1825.
43. Official, Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, Vol. 1, Spicer & William Clowes, London, 1851, p. 266. The entry was written by Charles Tomlinson.
44. R. Burchett, Practical Perspective, Chapman Hall, London, 1856, pp. 1-2.
45. Burchett's account of the properties of projective geometry and its inclusion in a School of Design lecture series should be considered alongside the institutionalization of drawing in the French educational system in the late nineteenth century. Molly Nesbit's analysis of drawing (and Michel Duchamp) is invaluable here: M. Nesbit, 'Ready-made originals: the Duchamp model', October, no. 37, Summer 1986, pp. 53-64;
46. M. Nesbit, 'The language of industry', in Thierry de Duve (ed. ), The Definitively Unfinished Marcel Duchamp, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Cambridge, MA & London, 1991.
47. The importance of projection in scientific education and practice in the second half of the nineteenth century in Britain is also interesting to compare. See J. L. Richards, 'Projective geometry and mathematical progress in mid-Victorian Britain', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol. 17, no. 3, 1986, pp. 297-325.
48. H. W. French, Technician Engineering Drawing 1, Cassell, London, 1979, p. 5.
49. Booker, op. cit. , p. 213.
50. The Technical Educator, Vol. I, p. 267.
51. The Engineer and Machinist's Drawing Book, p. 116.
52. French, op. cit. , p. 43.