Abstract
This article is based on a lecture given in Oxford in 2009 and was first intended as a contribution to the 300th anniversary of the invention of the Newcomen engine in 2012, but has been revised following the attention given to Britain’s industrial transformation in the opening ceremony of the London Olympic Games. The discovery and diffusion of new technologies pervades human history, yet ‘industrialisation’ is thought to be an 18th-century phenomenon. This paper will argue that it was the invention of technologies which speeded up the actual process of work itself which led to massive social change, rather than those which resulted in higher levels of production whilst not changing the actual methods of working. It will consider the contribution that industrial archaeologists have made to a greater understanding of the nature of the so-called ‘Industrial Revolution’ as well as considering how this phenomenon was viewed both at home and abroad.
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