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Connecting the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions: The Role of Practical Mathematics
Author(s)
Date Issued
06 July 2022
Date Available
13T10:19:23Z November 2023
Abstract
Disputes over whether the Scientific Revolution contributed to the Industrial Revolution begin with the common assumption that natural philosophers and artisans formed radically distinct groups. In reality, these groups merged together through a diverse group of applied mathematics teachers, textbook writers and instrument makers catering to a market ranging from navigators and surveyors to bookkeepers. Besides its direct economic contribution in diffusing useful numerical skills, this "practical mathematics" facilitated later industrialization in two ways. First, a large supply of instrument and watch makers provided Britain with a pool of versatile, mechanically skilled labour to build the increasingly complicated machinery of the late eighteenth century. Second, the less well known but equally revolutionary innovations in machine tools—which, contrary to the Habbakuk thesis, occurred largely in Britain during the 1820s and 1830s to mass produce interchangeable parts for iron textile machinery—drew on a technology of exact measurement developed for navigational and astronomical instruments.
Type of Material
Journal Article
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Journal
Journal of Economic History
Volume
82
Issue
3
Start Page
841
End Page
873
Copyright (Published Version)
2022 the Authors
Language
English
Status of Item
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0022-0507
This item is made available under a Creative Commons License
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4
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