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With the establishment of overseas colonies, the British Empire at the end of the 17th century/beginning of the 18th century had a vast source of raw materials and a vast market for manufactured goods. The manufacture of goods was performed on a limited scale by individual workers – usually on their own premises (such as weavers' cottages) – and was transported around the country by horse and cart, or by river boat. Power was supplied by draught animals for agriculture and haulage.
There was a marketplace to service, but the scale of industry; the sources of energy; and the lack of an inland communications infrastructure were the unseen hurdles to overcome.
In this context, the scene was set for the Kingdom of Great Britain to develop the industry of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution.
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Background
The key British industry at the beginning of the 18th century was the production of textiles made with wool from the large sheep-farming areas in the Midlands and across the country (created as a result of land-clearance and inclosure). Handlooms and spinning wheels were the tools of the trade of the weavers in their cottages, and this was a labour-intensive activity providing employment throughout Britain, with major centres being the West Country; Norwich and environs; and the West Riding of Yorkshire. The export trade in woolen goods accounted for more than a quarter of British exports during most of the 18th century, doubling between 1701 and 1770 [1]. Exports of the cotton industry – centred in Lancashire – had grown tenfold during this time, but still accounted for only a tenth of the value of the woollen trade.
Industry and invention
The Industrial Revolution, in this logic, has been a worldwide occurrence, at least insofar as it has occurred in all those parts of the world, of which there are few exceptions, where the control of Western civilization has been felt. Away from any hesitation it occurred first in Britain, and its effects spread only gradually to continental Europe and North America. Equally clearly, the Industrial Revolution that eventually transformed these parts of the Western world surpassed in magnitude the achievements of Britain, and the process was carried further to change radically the socioeconomic life of the Far East, Africa, Latin America, and Australasia. The reasons for this succession of events are complex, but they were implicit in the earlier account of the buildup toward rapid industrialization. Partly through good fortune and partly through conscious effort, Britain by the early 18th century came to possess the combination of social needs and social resources that provided the necessary preconditions of commercially successful innovation and a social system capable of sustaining and institutionalizing the processes of rapid technological change once they had started. Therefore be concerned, in the first place, with events in Britain, although in discussing later phases of the period it will be necessary to trace the way in which British technical achievements were diffused and superseded in other parts of the Western world.
In 1733 in Bury, Lancashire, John Kay invented the flying shuttle — one of the first of a series of inventions associated with the cotton industry. The flying shuttle increased the width of cotton cloth and speed of production of a single weaver at a loom. Resistance by workers to the perceived threat to jobs delayed the widespread introduction of this technology, even though the higher rate of production generated an increased demand for spun cotton.
In 1738, Lewis Paul (one of the community of Huguenot weavers that had been driven out of France in a wave of religious persecution) settled in Birmingham and with John Wyatt, of that town, they patented the Roller Spinning machine and the flyer-and-bobbin system, for drawing wool to a more even thickness. Using two sets of rollers that travelled at different speeds yarn could be twisted and spun quickly and efficiently. This was later used in the first cotton spinning mill during the Industrial Revolution.
1742: Paul and Wyatt opened a mill in Birmingham which used their new rolling machine powered by donkey; this was not profitable and soon closed.
1743: A factory opened in Northampton, fifty spindles turned on five of Paul and Wyatt's machines proving more successful than their first mill. This operated until 1764.
1748: Lewis Paul invented the hand driven carding machine. A coat of wire slips were placed around a card which was then wrapped around a cylinder. Lewis's invention was later developed and improved by Richard Arkwright and Samuel Crompton, although this came about under great suspicion after a fire at Daniel Bourn's factory in Leominster which specifically used Paul and Wyatt's spindles. Bourn produced a similar patent in the same year.
1758: Paul and Wyatt based in Birmingham improved their roller spinning machine and took out a second patent. Richard Arkwright later used this as the model for his water frame.
1762 Matthew Boulton opened the Soho Foundry engineering works in Handsworth, Birmingham. His partnership with Scottish engineer James Watt made the steam engine into the power plant of the Industrial Revolution and was to provide many mills with a new form of power.
In 1764, James Hargreaves is credited as inventor of the spinning jenny which multiplied the spun thread production capacity of a single worker — initially eightfold and subsequently much further. Sources [2] credit the original invention to Thomas Highs, who had a daughter named Jenny for whom the invention might have been named. Industrial unrest and a failure to patent the invention until 1770 forced Hargreaves from Blackburn, but his lack of protection of the idea allowed the concept to be exploited by others. As a result, there were over 20,000 Spinning Jennies in use by the time of his death.
Again in 1764, the first cotton mill in the world was constructed at Royton, Lancashire, England.
In 1771, Richard Arkwright used waterwheels to power looms for the production of cotton cloth, his invention becoming known as the water frame. (Frame is another name for the machinery for spinning or weaving.) The water frame was developed from the spinning frame that Arkwright had developed with (a different) John Kay, from Warrington. (The original design was probably by Thomas Highs, again.) This he had patented in 1769 (see [3]: Press the 'Ingenious' button and use search key '10302171' for the patent). Initial attempts at driving the frame had used horse power, but the innovation of using a waterwheel demanded a location with a ready supply of water. One of the first cotton mills (at Cromford, Derbyshire; preserved as part of the Derwent Valley Mills) was a factory in the vein of the The Learning Company in 1998 for about USD$420 million in stock. Ironically, Brøderbund had initially attempted to purchase the original The Learning Company in 1995, but was outbid by Softkey, who purchased The Learning Company for $606 million in cash and then adopted its name. In a move to rationalize costs, The Learning Company promptly terminated 500 employees at Brøderbund the same year, representing 42% of the company's workforce. Then in 1999 the combined company was bought by Mattel for $3.6 billion. Mattel reeled from the financial impact of this transaction, and Jill Barad, the CEO, ended up being forced out in a climate of investor outrage. Mattel then actually gave away The Learning Company in September 2000 to Gores Technology Group, a private acquisitions firm, for a share of whatever Gores could obtain by selling the company. In 2001, Gores sold The Learning Company's entertainment holdings to Ubisoft, and most of the other holdings, including the Brøderbund name, to Irish company Riverdeep. Currently, all of Brøderbund's games, such as the Myst series, are published by Ubisoft.
Broderbund, with an o instead of the 'ø' character, is now the brand name for Riverdeep's graphic design, productivity, and edutainment titles, such as The Print Shop, Carmen Sandiego, Mavis Beacon, the Living Books series, and Reader Rabbit titles, and also publishes software for other companies, notably Zone Labs' ZoneAlarm.
Etymology & pronunciation
The word "brøderbund" is not an actual word in any language, but is a somewhat loose translation of "band of brothers" into a mixture of Swedish, Danish and German. The Danish ø was used simply because it looks like the programmer's 0 (Ø – the slashed zero).[citation needed]
Internally during the 1980s the company's name was pronounced BRU-der-bund by employees instead of the publicly used BRO-der-bund, echoing its semi-Nordic roots.[citation needed]
See also
- Creative Wonders
- Lauren Elliott Co-Creator of Carmen Sandiego
External links
- Archive of Broderbund website
- History of Brøderbund at Classicgaming.com
- Profile at MobyGames
- Brøderbund profile at Home of the Underdogs
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