The History of British Industry: The Birth of the Industrial Revolution 1700 - 1825

The History of British Industry is a magisterial new three-volume story of how the United Kingdom became the world's first economic superpower - and how that crown slipped... Business historian Peter Pugh - who has written over 50 histories of British companies from Rolls-Royce to Kwik-Fit - explores in fascinating detail the people, politics, technology and economics of Britain's industrial heritage. Pugh begins with what was to become the world's first industrial revolution, and with Isaac Newton, whose Principia Mathematica, published in 1647, laid the foundations of classical mechanics and set the scene for more than a century of British invention. We meet the well-known pioneers of the age such as Thomas Newcomen, Matthew Boulton and James Watt, but Pugh makes the case too for reappraising lesser-known figures: Joseph Bramah, James Brindley, John Roebuck and Erasmus Darwin. Pugh also explores the South Sea Bubble, the dotcom boom of the early 1720s which left thousands of investors penniless - not least Isaac Newton himself, who lost the equivalent of GBP2.2 million.