First published in 1960, Pilkington Brothers and the Glass Industry is a comprehensive economic history of the glass industry in Britain. It charts the story of Pilkington Brothers and the manufacture of window and plate glass in Britain up to 1914. The epilogue to the book discusses the events that impacted the glass industry from 1914–1959. The volume gives an extensive account of the family background of the Pilkington family; the historical background to the flat glass industry in Britain; the challenges posed and opportunities opened up by — arrival and removal of competitors, excise duty and window tax, international competition from Belgium and tariffs on imports, new techniques and technological advancement, and labour crises and trade unionism. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of business, economics, and history. Due to modern production methods, it has not been possible to include some fold-out maps within the book. Any purchasers of the book will be able to receive a free pdf of the relevant pages by contacting Routledge Customer Services. https://www.routledge.com/contacts/customer-service
First published in 1994. This book is an outstanding product of St Helens, as remarkable in its way as sheetglass and Beechams pills. It is the first full scale nineteenth century history of a small industrial town as distinct from the bigger and better-known cities and as such it deserves to be very widely read and studied.
Isobel Armstrong's startlingly original and beautifully illustrated book tells the stories that spring from the mass-production of glass in nineteenth-century England. Moving across technology, industry, local history, architecture, literature, print culture, the visual arts, optics, and philosophy, it will transform our understanding of the Victorian period. The mass production of glass in the nineteenth century transformed an ancient material into a modern one, at the same time transforming the environment and the nineteenth-century imagination. It created a new glass culture hitherto inconceivable. Glass culture constituted Victorian modernity. It was made from infinite variations of the prefabricated glass panel, and the lens. The mirror and the window became its formative elements, both the texts and constituents of glass culture. The glassworlds of the century are heterogeneous. They manifest themselves in the technologies of the factory furnace, in the myths of Cinderella and her glass slipper circulated in print media, in the ideologies of the conservatory as building type, in the fantasia of the shopfront, in the production of chandeliers, in the Crystal Palace, and the lens-made images of the magic lantern and microscope. But they were nevertheless governed by two inescapable conditions. First, to look through glass was to look through the residues of the breath of an unknown artisan, because glass was mass produced by incorporating glassblowing into the division of labour. Second, literally a new medium, glass brought the ambiguity of transparency and the problems of mediation into the everyday. It intervened between seer and seen, incorporating a modern philosophical problem into bodily experience. Thus for poets and novelists glass took on material and ontological, political, and aesthetic meanings. Reading glass forwards into Bauhaus modernism, Walter Benjamin overlooked an early phase of glass culture where the languages of glass are different. The book charts this phase in three parts. Factory archives, trade union records, and periodicals document the individual manufacturers and artisans who founded glass culture, the industrial tourists who described it, and the systematic politics of window-breaking. Part Two, culminating in glass under glass at the Crystal Palace, reads the glassing of the environment, including the mirror, the window, and controversy round the conservatory, and their inscription in poems and novels. Part Three explores the lens, from optical toys to 'philosophical' instruments as the telescope and microscope were known. A meditation on its history and phenomenology, Victorian Glassworlds is a poetics of glass for nineteenth-century modernity.
The field of business history has changed and grown dramatically over the last few years. There is less interest in the traditional `company-centred' approach and more concern about the wider business context. With the growth of multi-national corporations in the 1980s, international and inter-firm comparisons have gained in importance. In addition, there has been a move towards improving links with mainstream economic, financial and social history through techniques and outlook. The International Bibliography of Business History brings all of the strands together and provides the user with a comprehensive guide to the literature in the field. The Bibliography is a unique volume which covers the depth and breadth of research in business history. This exhaustive volume has been compiled by a team of subject specialists from around the world under the editorship of three prestigious business historians.
This is the first and only reference volume covering the subject of windows in depth - no other book offers this wealth of practical detail. It is highly accessible, written for both the professional and interested layperson Written by a team of 15 experts - surveyors, structural engineers, craftsmen and conservators describing their own approaches to specific materials, problems and designs. It includes over 400 illustrations in colour and black and white, from a wide range of sources, including historic drawings, paintings, pattern books, textbooks, manufacturers' catalogues and contemporary and archive photographs. It is an invaluable asset for everyone involved with windows on a daily basis, combining the knowledge of leading historians and experts in the field of window conservation. The window is a familiar yet surprisingly complex feature, with a rich history that has not, up until now, been explored in any great depth. This encyclopaedic work is both a fascinating exploration of the history and development of the window, and a practical hands-on guide to their care and preservation. Part 1 covers the history of the window including the development in glass technology. It also provides an illustrated glossary of window types. Part 2 reviews the changes in policy and legislation and discusses structural issues, decay mechanisms and the current stringent performance standards and how they affect historic windows. Part 3 focuses on the materials used in the construction of windows and the craft of leaded glazing. It details the appropriate techniques for repair and conservation. Windows is fully illustrated in both colour and mono to include over 400 high quality illustrations.
Britain and France were the leading industrial nations in 18th-century Europe. This book examines the rivalry which existed between the two nations and the methods used by France to obtain the skilled manpower and technology which had given Britain the edge - particularly in the new coal-based technologies. Despite the British Act of 1719 which outlawed industrial espionage and technology transfer, France continued to bring key industrial workers from Britain and to acquire British machinery and production methods. Drawing on a mass of unpublished archival material, this book investigates the nature and application of British laws and the involvement of some major British industrialists in these issues, and discusses the extent to which French espionage had any real success. In the process it presents an in-depth understanding of 18th-century economies, and the cultures and bureaucracies which were so important in shaping economic life. Above all, the late John Harris saw the history of industrial espionage as ’one means of restoring the thoughts and activities of human beings to the centre stage of industrial history’. These are the stories of individuals - Holkers, Trudaines, Wilkinsons, or Milnes - and their impact on the world.
Glass is one of the most fascinating and versatile building materials in architectural history. The new insights into glass in architecture are the result of research at the intersection of glass production, construction technology and building culture. Coming from a variety of disciplines, the contributions bridge the divide between natural sciences, humanities and the preservation and restoration of cultural heritage. They explore the crucial role of flat glass in shaping architecture, particularly since the 18th century, and discuss the in-situ restoration of historic windows and glass façades and the importance of preserving this fragile heritage. The topics range from the manufacture of sheet glass in pre-industrial times to the possibilities of repair and reusability of insulating glazing. With contributions by Océane Bailleul, Peter Bellendorf, Stefan Bichlmair, Catherine Blaine, Anne-Laure Carré, Niels De Temmerman, Matthias Fischer, Susanne Fischer, Waldo Galle, Josef Ganka, Esther Geboes, Emma Groult, Melchior Fischli, Ueli Fritz, Florin Gstöhl, Isabel Haupt, Laura Hindelang, Hauke Horn, Peter Heinrich Jahn, Olivia Jorgji, Dunja Kielmann, Ralf Kilian, Katrin Lenz, Giulia Marino, Christine Milch, Angelika Reiff, Alexandra Schmölder, Logan Sisley, Helen Spencer, Ruth Tenschert, Vitaly Volkov and Sophie Wolf A multi-disciplinary survey of the history of the production and use of flat glass From the Roman times to the present day New insights on sheet glass as building material and cultural heritage
Franqois Crouzet devoted much of his life to the study of European industrialisation, and Britain ascendant draws together a series of essays, written in the course of his career and thoroughly revised, examining the rise of Britain to the position of dominance in the world economy of the nineteenth century, and the concomitant decline of France.
