Description
Book SynopsisThis innovative study investigates why inventors rose to heroic stature and popular acclaim in Victorian Britain. Christine MacLeod argues that inventors became figureheads of various nineteenth-century factions who deployed their heroic reputation, not least to challenge the aristocracy's hold on power and the militaristic national identity that bolstered it.
Trade Review'[MacLeod's] book is a masterpiece of history.' Nuncius: Journal of the History of Science
'In this interesting and valuable book, Christine MacLeod has chosen the inventor to reflect on British national identity, an individual she describes as an improbable hero. [She] has written an illuminating account of the way in which culture, economics, and politics converged to give to the inventor a brief hegemonic interlude.' Richard A. Cosgrove, University of Arizona
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; Abbreviations; List of illustrations; 1. Introduction: inventors and other heroes; 2. The new Prometheus; 3. The inventor's progress; 4. The apotheosis of James Watt; 5. Watt, inventor of the Industrial Revolution; 6. 'What's Watt?' The radical critique; 7. The technological pantheon; 8. Heroes of the Pax Britannica; 9. Debating the patent system; 10. The workers' heroes; 11. Maintaining the industrial spirit; 12. Science and the disappearing inventor; Epilogue. The Victorian legacy; Bibliography; Index.
