Waterpower in Lowell: Engineering and Industry in Nineteenth-Century America (Johns Hopkins Introductory Studies in the History of Technology)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.16 (873 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0801893062 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 272 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-06-13 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
James B. Patrick M. Francis, arguably the finest engineer in 19th-century America, played a key role in the history of Lowell’s urban industrial development. Malone demonstrates how innovative engineering helped make Lowell, Massachusetts, a potent symbol of American industrial prowess in the 19th century. Its clear and instructional discussions of hydraulic technology and engineering principles make it a useful resource for a range of courses, including the history of technology, urban history, and American business history.. An English immigrant who came to work for Lowell’s Proprietors of Locks and Canals as a young man, Francis rose to become both the company’s chief engineer and its managing executive. Malone explains how engineers created a complex canal and lock system in Lowell which harnessed the river and powered mills throughout the city. Waterpower spurred the industrialization of the early United States and was the principal power for textile manufacturing until well after the Civil War. Linking Francis’s life and career with the larger story of waterpower in Lowell,
He is the coauthor of The Texture of Industry: An Archaeological View of the Industrialization of North America, and the author of The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics among the New England Indians, also published by Johns Hopkins.. Patrick M. Malone is a professor of urban stu
Molly Brennan Cox said Lucid and illuminating. Mr. Malone’s book is a lucid and illuminating treatment of the under-appreciated topic of water power as a prime mover in the New England textile industry. The continuous narrative of the growth and management of water power in Lowell; the emphasis on historical rather than technical detail; and the portrait of
Readers interested in the broaders history of urban infrastructure will surely appreciate this. (David E. (Ian West Industrial Archaeology Review)This worthy contribution to historical understanding is also an accessible undergraduate text It would enliven any survey course in the history of American technology. (John K. Reynolds, Michigan Technological University)Malone has made a real contribution by illuminating the technological basis for the rise of the nation's first planned industrial city and by showing how the novel demands posed by that industrial complex contributed to the emergence of hydraulic engineering over the course of the nineteenth century. (Thomas Dublin New England Quarterly)A work of outstanding scholarship wit