A Day at the Factory
In 1832 the Penny Magazine, reputedly the world's first illustrated weekly magazine, was launched. By 1844 when these articles were published, the magazine was a wild success, proving that people were hungry for knowledge.
The
Industrial Revolution was in full swing in the UK, and the new technologies
were mysteries to most of the population. Each month, a special supplement
took readers into a factory to examine British heavy industry. Since photography
was only five years old, and the only form available was the daguerreotype
or the salted paper process of Fox-Talbot, artists were dispatched to make
sketches that were then converted into wood engravings to educate readers.
Now you can hop into your time machine and visit early factories. Watch as castiron is turned into wrought iron. Visit the steel factories in Sheffield and watch carbon being added to wrought iron to produce what was thought to be the world's finest crucible steel (a rare, expensive metal). Watch craftsmen make files by accurately cutting thousands of grooves with hammer and chisel at incredible speed. See saws, scissors, and pocket-knives being made. Learn how the crucibles for steel making were fabricated. See the wooden and iron forge hammers used to work the iron into bars and eventually into sheets.
Visit the chemical factory near Newcastle-on-Tyne and see the incredible kilns and retorts used to make sulphuric acid, sodium carbonate and calcium sulphate, hydrochloric acid, bleaching powder, alum and more.
Visit the glass factory and see how crown glass was created by spinning a cylinder into a disc and allowing it to cool. Learn how plate glass was cast, ground and polished. Explore the making of millions of glass bottles.
Journey to Glasgow to see grassy fields covered by acres of newly dyed cloth drying. The chemical processes involved seem primitive by today's standards, but the results were impressive.
Near
Newcastle you'll see lead ingots being cast, small lead shot being molded,
and lead plates being cast. Learn how red lead and white lead, so deadly to
painters of the era, was made.
Briefly visit Sopwith's cabinet factory, Stephenson's locomotive factory, the linseed oil mill, and the starch factory.
Finally, marvel at the newest technology: electroplating. Electricity just then being investigated by Faraday in London and others in Europe, and yet it was already being used in industry!
You get a surprising number of woods cuts (but, of course, never quite enough). And you get details about the outrageous taxes the Brits were paying (seems to me that sort of thing led to a tea party once in Boston), about how workers suffered from deadly lung diseases, poured incredibly hot molten steel with wet leather as their only safety gear, and even a few details about housing and social events. Incredible stuff.
If you lived in England in the 1840's, this could have been YOUR occupation. These workman could have been you. Retirement plans? What retirement? You would have been lucky to reach your fortieth birthday.
Fascinating book. Well written. Easy to read. Written for the layman. Interesting wood cuts. Big type for old men like us with trifocals. A fun book I think you'll enjoy. (If you like it, let us know. We might publish a sequel.) Get a copy. Worth having. 8-1/2 x 11 softcover 152 pages
No. 23039 ... $14.95
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