Inventing the Industrial Revolution: The English Patent System, 1660–1800 by Christine MacLeod

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 519 Inventing the Industrial Revolution: The English Patent System, 1660— 1800. By Christine MacLeod. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Pp. xii + 302; tables, notes, bibliography, index. $44.50. Henry Dutton’s The Patent System and Inventive Activity during the IndustrialRevolution (Manchester, 1984) was the first thorough account of the English system of patent law, taking the subject beyond legal antiquarianism to an analysis of the consequences of patent law for industry and providing an account of the role of the patent agent in the first half of the 19th century. Now, every economic historian and historian of technology will welcome Christine MacLeod’s book, par­ ticularly because it covers the whole span of English patent law and brings together the results of research by others that have been ac­ cumulating during the last twenty years. The book has a useful bib­ liography, and its notes are excellent: it also has fourteen tables, but would have been assisted by a map giving the distribution of patents. There are chapters dealing with the relationship between the conflict over monopolies and the emergence of a patent law system, on the development of the patent system between 1660 and 1800, examining why some inventors decided to patent while others did not, on the growth of a defensive patenting system, and analyzing the motives leading to patenting. This last is a crucial and fascinating section. Then follow a chapter on inventions outside the patent system and one analyzing the geographical distribution of patents and the background of the patentees as that changed over time. MacLeod then turns her attention to the long-term rise in patents, examining the forces in society and the economy that put pressure on inventors to patent. I found myself particularly interested in this last chapter for its discussion of patents taken out for middle-class consumer goods. Prosser’s words—“panics, fashions, and popular crazes generally leave their mark upon the patent records” (p. 156)—are a salutary reminder that simplistic equations between patent law and long-term growth may conceal the importance of short-term social and eco­ nomic factors. Here the author makes good use of the work of T. S. Ashton, S. O. Chapman, D. C. Coleman (her mentor), N. McKendrick , A. E. Musson, E. Robinson, and L. Weatherill. Indeed, wher­ ever one checks MacLeod’s secondary reading, it appears to be sound and thorough. She also ranges widely—from an article by Marjorie Nicolson on “A World in the Moon” to R. L. Hills’s Power in the Industrial Revolution, from Rosamond Harding’s history of the piano­ forte to Carolyn Cooper on “The Portsmouth System of Manufac­ ture.” That range of interest and the inquiring spirit that it reflects help to make this book an exciting read. (I found some of MacLeod’s statistical analysis a little dreary but confess that her conclusions are restrained by common sense and good judgment.) 520 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Nor is MacLeod afraid to challenge old prejudices such as the “common assumption that the major goal of technical change is to save labour” (p. 159). She points out, for example, that several 18th-century patents were directed toward reducing risks to the workers’ health in the pottery, glass, and white lead trades, in seafaring, in brewing, and even chimney sweeping. When one considers present-day instrumentation for testing the safety of food, this should come as no surprise, except that we tend to think of people in earlier ages as more stupid than ourselves. One of the advantages of this book is that it treats the motives of people in earlier ages as basically rational and therefore worthy of serious analysis. Chapter 10, “Patents: Criticisms and Alternatives,” reminds us that before the mid-18th century the question of how best to promote invention was seldom asked in relation to patent law. Much later, and in other countries as well, alternative methods of stimulating invention—grants, prizes, competitions—were all tried. Ultimately, the system of obliging the patentee to find his own reward in the market was probably as successful as anything else. Yet even a man like James Watt, who kept...