BOOK OF THE DAY: The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry and Inventionby William Rosen Jonathan Cape 395 pages, £20
THE WORLD’S most powerful idea, is it love, poetry, art, music, religion, philosophy? According to the author it is invention, that strange process which impels the busy mind to create things, some world-alteringly useful, others less so. Mr Rosen begins and ends his story of inventions and inventors with the first successful steam locomotive, George Stephenson’s Rocket which took the laurels at the Rainhill trials in 1829. The author then makes a convincing case that harnessing steam, the stuff that propelled the Rocket at a dizzying 30mph, led to the industrial revolution and changed the world.
Steam allowed designers to build pumps to drain the deepest mines, which in turn allowed more coal to be brought up, which in turn powered railways, ships, mills and factories. The rest is indeed history; or bunk as Henry Ford opined.
This book is about more than just inventions, it is about invention itself: what it is, who did it, how, why and its many effects. Invention is an ambiguous word derived from the Latin invenire, to find or contrive, and implies creating something out of nothing. An invention can be something you discover or it can apply to the explanation your teenager offers for being five hours late getting home. It needs to be ongoing: I'd love to invent a way to channel shower water on to the garden without rebuilding the house.
A fascinating section covers the thinking of inventors. Drawing on the work of others via a pyramid of genius, most inventors struggle for years with a problem until their eureka moment. Invention cannot be forced but certain conditions encourage it. Like Archimedes in the bath, Newton’s apple or Gibbon contemplating the Roman Forum, insight often strikes when a person is alone, calm and relaxed. Also interesting is the coincidence of several people stumbling on an invention at the same time.
That caused a few spats and still does.
Other significant names include James Watt who gave his name to electricity units, James Hargreaves of Spinning Jenny fame, Marc Isambard Brunel whose son, IK Brunel, was an even greater engineer and Robert Boyle from Lismore. Boyle’s law on gases is inscribed on the hearts of all physics students.
As Galileo and Leonardo discovered, a dilemma for early inventors was how to liberate science from the straitjacket of natural philosophy.
Technologically the monastic orders were pretty sophisticated and one theory is that Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries delayed the industrial revolution two centuries. Intriguing, but not credible: even without monastery closures France industrialised after England. In fact one of the world’s first factories, Albion Mills, opened in south London in 1786.
Does this book work? Largely it does. The character sketches are good and the author has a whimsical touch sprinkled with humour. But there is rather more technical detail than the average reader needs and some digressions down sideroads of limited interest. The only illustrations are vintage technical drawings, pleasant enough but there is none of the Rocket itself nor the medley of characters who made their entrances and exits throughout this fascinating story.
Fergus Mulligan is the author of Trinity College Dublin: A Walking Guidejust published by Trinity College Library