Pugin had a great passion for Gothic architecture of the medieval cathedrals ... He really believed in it with his heart and soul. ibid.
The Houses of Parliament: this was the job that made Pugin’s name. He got it as a result of the old Palace of Westminster burning down in 1834 ... Pugin wanted to build something that would match Westminster Abbey next door. ibid.
Building began in 1837 and the Barry-Pugin partnership was right for the job. Pugin looked after the detail of the design. ibid.
First of all there was water and wind, the earliest forms of power to drive machinery. Then came steam, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Britain led the world in harnessing the power of coal, water and steam to drive the engines that revolutionised transport and made mass production possible. The steam engine really is a fascinating thing. Fred Dibnah’s Age of Steam e1: The Early Pioneers, BBC 2003
The steam-engine really is a fairly simple thing. There’s two main principles: the expansion of steam in a cylinder pushing a piston which is connected to a crank shaft or a connecting rod. And the second principle of course is the condensation of steam which creates a vacuum in the cylinder. ibid.
The steam turbine isn’t only used for generating electricity. It serves dozens of purposes in the world of industry. ibid.
Thomas Newcomen invented a brand new type of steam-engine which was designed solely for one purpose: to pump water from deep mine shafts. The first one was installed here at Staffordshire at a colliery, and it proved to be the world’s most successful steam-engine. ibid.
What was needed was a more efficient engine. And this is where James Watt came on to the scene ... In 1769 James Watt came up with the answer: he put together all the existing technology that were known about the steam engine at the time and came up with the revolutionary design that of course earned him the name the Father of the Steam-Engine. ibid.
It was a Cornishman called Richard Trevithick who made some of the greatest advances in the 1790s and the early 1800s. ibid.
Mining was still a difficult and dangerous business. Sometimes it was the steam-engine itself that made it dangerous. ibid.
In 1803 Richard Trevithick builds a second road carriage which he drove around the streets of London. ibid.
So Trevithick turned his attention to developing a steam locomotive that would run on rails. ibid.
Steam power brought about a revolution in transport. It was one of Britain’s greatest contributions to the industrial world. In the age of steam the railways moved everything and everybody. Fred Dibnah’s Age of Steam e2: The Transport Revolution
By this time the first steam powered locos designed to run on metal tracks appeared on the scene. And the pioneer as with so many things associated with steam was the great Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick. ibid.
Stephenson wasn’t the inventor of the locomotive, but he played a leading part in turning it into a practical means of hauling coal and transporting passengers over long distances. It was the beginning of the railways as we know them. ibid.
Originally there were nine of these winding-engine houses, and this is the only one left. And it actually still works. ibid.
As the railway network spread across the country it was the locomotive that won the day. ibid.
The development of the railways wasn’t straightforward, especially when the great engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel was involved. While Britain’s network had developed with a four-foot-eight-and-a half-inch gauge, Brunel’s Great Western Railway was built with a completely different seven-foot-and-a-quarter-inch gauge ... They did away with Mr Brunel’s extra line on the outside. A shame really. ibid.
In spite of losing the battle of the gauges, Great Western Railway went from strength to strength. And in 1902 they appointed George Jackson Churchward as their locative superintendent, and he produced a range of designs that were far ahead of their time and very successful. ibid.
Between 1804 and 1971 Britain built an incredible one hundred and ten thousand steam locomotives. ibid.
For nearly two hundred years steam drove the wheels of industry and made Britain into the greatest industrial nation in the world. Fred Dibnah’s Age of Steam e3: Driving the Wheels of Industry
These things are called looms for spinning cloth with. The noise levels are terrific. Can you imagine what it must have been like in a room with fifteen hundred of these things all going at the same time for sixteen hours a day? ibid.
A Boulton & Watt beam-engine – all of twenty horse-power. ibid.
By the middle of the nineteenth century a steam-engine had been harnessed to every industry that was around ... And it had a massive effect on the lives of working people. ibid.
This is what’s known as a Cornish boiler – reputedly invented by Richard Trevithick in Cornwall. ibid.
People don’t realise really the power of steam ... It’s like a potential bomb in a way. ibid.
By the middle of the nineteenth century Boulton & Watt’s rotating beam-engine began to give way to this thing – the horizontal steam-engine. ibid.
It was a very efficient way of driving machinery. ibid.
The industrialisation of the great cities put a terrible strain on the antiquated water and sewage systems ... Many new pumping stations had to be built. ibid.
Then steam power was introduced to the oceans to make sea travel between the continents faster. Fred Dibnah’s Age of Steam e5: Steam on the Water
The triple expansion engine turns a screw propeller, and it’s this that powers the ship through the water. And very nice it is too. But the first steam-powered ships were propelled by paddle wheels like this. ibid.
It was one of my heroes Isambard Kingdom Brunel who made the breakthrough. The SS Great Britain was built by Brunel. It was one of the outstanding engineering achievements of the Victorian age. ibid.
Brunel went on to build a bigger ship – the Great Eastern. ibid.
By the end of the nineteenth century the steam engine was being put to a wide range of uses. ibid.
‘I name this ship Britannia’ ... Three steam turbines that generate all the electricity for the ship. ibid.
The steam turbine was invented by Charles Parsons. Fred Dibnah’s Age of Steam e6: Steam and the Modern Age
But electricity didn’t make steam redundant. The thing that made possible the mass supply of electricity was steam. ibid.
The Lake District isn’t really an area most people associate with our industrial past and heavy industry. Once upon a time round Workington and Barrow in Furnace there were great industrial centres and they mined iron ore in the hundreds of tons, and it were some of the best iron ore in all of England. You know. Alas, it’s all gone. Fred Dibnah’s Made in Britain e3: The Source of Iron
All the ore mined at the Florence mine came here to the Workington steel works where is were converted by Bessemer converters into steel to manufacture railway lines. ibid.
We’re now in Falkirk which of course was the place where the industrial revolution in Scotland all started. And here there is a great iron foundry called the Carron Iron Works that were opened in 1760. After thirty years it employed a thousand men and became the biggest iron smelting plant in the whole of Europe. Fred Dinah’s Made in Britain e4: Castings
It’s amazing how many different makers there were of these things [steam engines]. Fred Dibnah’s Made in Britain e9: Engines at Work
Chains made in the Black Country were renowned for their quality all over the world. At the end of the nineteenth century 90% of all the chain workshops in England and Wales were here in the black country. ibid.
Ironbridge: This is the world’s first cast-iron bridge. Iron was so important round here that this place was regarded as the beginning or the cradle of the industrial revolution. It wasn’t just bridges they made here. Fred Dibnah’s World of Steam, Steel and Stone e1: The Industrial Landscape, BBC 2006
‘Up until the 1850s they only really cast-iron, you know. And they really needed something a bit tougher. And along came Henry Bessemer in 1855 and he invented this thing – a giant eggcup.’ ibid. Fred
‘This has got to be the biggest winding engine left in the world. And it were made about 1905 and it kept on running until the 1970s. And I’m now going to do a demonsteration [sic] of how fast you can put it in reverse from full steam forwards to backwards. And here we go. Did you like that? I did.’ ibid.
Between 1710 and 1712 Thomas Newcomen invented a brand new type of steam-engine – the atmospheric engine which was designed solely for one purpose – to pump water from deep mine shafts. Fred Dibnah’s World of Steam, Steel and Stone e3: The Machines That Changed the World
Trevithick’s use of strong steam meant that you could build an engine that weighed about ten tons that would do the same work as an engine that weighed six hundred and fifty tons. ibid.