keynes – Philip Hamlyn Williams

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This Time No Mistakes – how to remake Britain

May 25, 2024 — 0 Comments

Nottingham manufacturing history

Nottingham was the world’s centre of lace making. It had the largest manufacturer of bicycles in Britain and supplied pharmaceuticals to every British high street. How did it all begin and what happened? Nottingham was one of the five Boroughs of the Danelaw along with Leicester, Derby, Lincoln and Stamford and certainly in common with […]

Leicester Manufacturing History

My exploration of British manufacturing has been sector by sector and chronological. It is time now to begin to join up the dots and explore those towns where manufacturing takes place or in some case took place. I begin with the city where I now live and seek of offer a flavour of manufacturing in […]

Festival of Britain – Design Review

The products and manufacturers featured at the festival of Britain in London, England in 1951

Coal, oil and wind. Where is British manufacturing

“It’s the end of the first Industrial Revolution, really,” says engineering manager Nigel Bates. He first stepped on to the Ratcliffe (power station)site more than 40 years ago, as a 16-year-old mechanical apprentice with a handful of O-levels. “Coal started it all, and soon we’re going to end it,” he says. With coal, we were […]

Adventurers – the road to manufacturing

How British traders and seafarers provided the impetus that triggered the Industrial Revolution

The Great Exhibition of manufactures opened on 1 May 1851

The Great Exhibition of 1851 presented British manufacturers to the world

Who else shaped the manufacturing world – American and European electricity.

Jill Jonnes in her book, Empires of Light, tells the story of the birth of the American giants of electricity. Electricity was ‘discovered’ by a number of scientists in a number of countries. Its existence had been there for all mankind to witness in electrical storms; but what was it? How could it be used? […]

Who else shaped the manufacturing world – American steel

The story of American steel making begins in the wake of the Civil War. A number of academics take a start date of 1867 which coincides with the dramatic increase in US territory with the purchase of Alaska from Russia. Steel making though was to focus on the Commonwealth of Philadelphia where there were plentiful […]

Steel manufacturing today

The state of British steel manufacturing in 2024 with the impact of Tata and Chinese ownership

Who else shaped the Manufacturing World – German steel

In Britain, the relatively large scale production of steel probably began in the mid eighteenth century with the discovery by Huntsman of a process for making crucible steel. This was some seventy years head of Germany and thrived on high quality Swedish ore. German steel making would become synonymous with the name Krupp and in […]