Birmingham is one of England's principal industrial centres and has a history of industrial and scientific innovation. It was once known as 'city of a thousand trades' and in 1791, Arthur Young (the writer and commentator on British economic life) described Birmingham as "the first manufacturing town in the world". Right up until the mid-19th century Birmingham was regarded as the prime industrial urban town in Britain and perhaps the world, the town's rivals were more specific in their trade bases. Mills and foundries across the world were helped along by the advances in steam power and engineering that were taking place in the city. The town offered a vast array of industries and was the world's leading manufacturer of metal ware, although this was by no means the only trade flourishing in the town.
By the year 2000, of the 4,000 inventions copyrighted annually in the UK, 2,800 came from within a 35-mile radius of Birmingham. Peter Colegate of the Patent Office stated that "Every year, Birmingham amazes us by coming up with thousands of inventions. It is impossible to explain but people in the area seem to have a remarkable ability to come up with, and have the dedication to produce, ideas."
While the time line of industry and innovation listed below is extensive, it is by no means a comprehensive list of Birmingham's industrial and scientific achievements, more a guide to highlight the great diversity in the city's industrial might, which can still be seen today.
Pre-17th century
Birmingham's reputation for trade and innovation really begins to take off in the 12th century with the expansion of a market held there by the De Birmingham family. Around this time the Birmingham Bull Ring begins to take shape, and with the town's markets there arises a necessity to produce items good enough to be sold elsewhere.
Medieval crafts in the town include textiles, leather working and iron working, with archaeological evidence also suggesting the presence of pottery, tile manufacture and probably the working of bone and horn. The following period sees the new town expand rapidly in highly favourable economic circumstances and there is archaeological evidence of small-scale industries taking place such as kilns producing the distinctive local Deritend ware pottery.
The following decades, Birmingham becomes very productive in several trades metal working, including making small, high value items, possibly jewellery or metal ornaments, for Master of the Knights Templar. They are sufficiently well known to be referred to without explanation as far away as London.;
Birmingham's first notable literary figure is John Rogers, the compiler and editor of the 1537 Matthew Bible, parts of which he also translates. This is the first complete authorised version of the Bible to be printed in the English language and the most influential of the early English printed Bibles, providing the basis for the later Great Bible and the Authorized King James Version. Rogers' 1548 translation of Philip Melanchthon's Weighing of the Interim, possibly translated in Deritend, is the first book by a Birmingham man known to have been printed in England.
By the early 16th century Birmingham has already evolved into a well established arms manufacturing town, in 1538 churchman John Leialand passes through the Midlands and writes:
I came through a praty street or ever I entered Bermingham. This street, as I remember, is called Dirty (Deritend). In it dwells smiths and cutlers and there is a brooke that divides this street from Bermingham ........ There be many smiths in the towne, that use to make knives and all manner of cutting tools, and many lorimers that make bittes, and a great many naylours, so that a great part of the towne is maintained by smiths, who have their iron and sea-coal out of Staffordshire."
Birmingham loses its Lord of the manor in the 16th century, and the district as a whole remains an area of weak lordship throughout the following centuries. With local government remaining essentially manorial, the townspeoples' resulting high degree of economic and social freedom is to be a highly significant factor in Birmingham's subsequent development.;
In 1642 the early Birmingham mathematician and astronomer Nathaniel Nye publishes A New Almanacke and Prognostication calculated exactly for the faire and populous Towne of Birmicham in Warwickshire, where the Pole is elevated above the Horizon 52 degrees and 38 minutes, and may serve for any part of this Kingdome.
Birmingham's principal tradesmen during the English Civil War were the smiths, who were called upon to manufacture over 15,000 sword blades, these are supplied to Parliamentarian forces only. One of the town's leading minds, 'Nathaniel Nye' is recorded as testing a Birmingham cannon in 1643. Nye also experimented with a saker in Deritend in 1645. From 1645 he became the master gunner to the Parliamentarian garrison at Evesham and in 1646 he successfully directs the artillery at the Siege of Worcester, detailing his experiences and in his 1647 book The Art of Gunnery, believing that war is as much a science as an art.
The earliest known clock makers in the town arrived from London in 1667. Between 1770 and 1870 there are over 700 clock and watch makers in the town.
In 1689 Sir Richard Newdigate, one of the new, local Newdigate baronets, approaches manufacturers in the town with the notion of supplying the British Government with small arms. It is stressed that they would need to be of high enough calibre to equal the small arms that were being imported from abroad. After a successful trial order in 1692, the government places its first contract. On 5 January 1693, the "Officers of Ordnance" chooses five local firearms manufacturers to initially produce 200 "snaphance musquets" per month over the period of one year, paying 17 shillings per musket, plus 3 shillings per hundredweight for delivery to London. During the 18th century, Birmingham became the leading supplier of guns for the expanding British Empire.
18th century 1722: Richard Baddeley, ironmonger, patents a method for "casting wheel streaks and box irons".
1727: Birmingham is becoming a hot-bed of creative activity and local businessman and bookseller Thomas Warren opens a bookshop in the Birmingham's High Street. Warren is an influential figure in Birmingham at this time.
1732: The Birmingham Journal is founded and published from Thomas Warren's book store. This is possibly Birmingham's first weekly newspaper; one of its contributors is the very notable Samuel Johnson of nearby Lichfield.
1733: Thomas Warren edits and publishes Samuel Johnson's first original writing—a translation of Jerónimo Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia. Johnson works for the Journal while he lodges with Warren. Johnson later moves on to greater things and James Boswell writes of Johnson's life: "After nine years of work, Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755; it had a far-reaching effect on Modern English and has been described as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship". The dictionary brings Johnson popularity and success. Until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary 150 years later, Johnson's dictionary is among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language.
1738: Lewis Paul and John Wyatt, of Birmingham, patent the roller spinning machine and the flyer-and-bobbin system, for drawing cotton to a more even thickness, using two sets of rollers that travel at different speeds. This principle later becomes the basis of Richard Arkwright's water frame.
1741: John Wyatt, mechanic and inventor, designs and constructs a cart-weighing machine, later referred to as a compound lever weighing machine; the design works by way of levers that hold in place a platform, no matter where the weight is placed the load is transferred to a central lever. Weights attached to that lever then help in obtaining a reading of accurate weight. The simplicity, efficiency and accuracy of the weighing machine prove extremely popular across England, subsequently weighing errors are reduced to approximately one pound per ton, this remains a high standard of measurement into the mid-19th century.
1741: The Upper Priory Cotton Mill opens as the world's first mechanised cotton-spinning factory. It is financed by local businessman Thomas Warren, and opened by John Wyatt and Lewis Paul.
1742: John Baskerville takes out a patent for making metal mouldings, rolling, grinding and japanning metal plates by use of weights, rollers and pickling, which Baskerville uses over the more traditional method of employing screws. This is the first patent for making metal mouldings by passing them through rolls of a certain profile.
1743: A factory opens in Northampton, fifty spindles turned on five of Paul and Wyatt's machines proving more successful than their first mill. This operates until 1764.
1746: The Colmore family release land on what is later to be known as the Jewellery Quarter to help satisfy the demands of an increasing population.
1746: A sulphuric acid factory is set up at Steelhouse Lane to use the lead chamber process invented by its co-founder John Roebuck. Roebuck and local businessman Samuel Garbett later relocate to Prestonpans in Scotland, taking with them several skilled men from the Birmingham factory. It is here in 1762 where Roebuck takes out a patent for making malleable iron.
1748: Lewis Paul invents the hand driven carding machine. A coat of wire slips are placed around a card, which is then wrapped around a cylinder. Lewis's invention is later developed and improved by Richard Arkwright and Samuel Crompton, although this comes about under great suspicion after a fire at Daniel Bourn's factory in Leominster that specifically uses Paul and Wyatt's spindles. Bourn produces a similar patent in the same year.
1757: Rev John Dyer of Northampton recognises the importance of the Paul and Wyatt cotton spinning machine in poem:
1757: Baskerville serif typeface is designed by John Baskerville (1706–1775) in Birmingham, England. Baskerville is classified as a transitional typeface, positioned between the old style typefaces of William Caslon, and the modern styles of Giambattista Bodoni and Firmin Didot.
1758: Paul and Wyatt improve their Roller Spinning machine and take out a second patent. Richard Arkwright later uses this as the model for his water frame.
1758: Benjamin Franklin first travels to Birmingham "to improve and increase Acquaintance among Persons of Influence", and later returns in 1760 to conduct experiments with Boulton on electricity and sound. Franklin remains a common link among many of the early Lunar Society members.
1759: A patent is granted to Thomas Blockley (locksmith), for rolling iron into different forms and making (metal) wheel tyres.
1762: Matthew Boulton opens the Soho Foundry engineering works, Handsworth; his partnership with Scottish engineer James Watt makes the steam engine into the power plant for the Industrial Revolution. The term "horsepower" is coined by Watt.
1765: The Lunar Society begins life as a dinner club and informal learned society of prominent figures in the Midlands Enlightenment, including industrialists, natural philosophers and intellectuals, who meet regularly until 1813 in Birmingham. A paper read at the Science Museum in London in 1963 claims that "of all the provincial philosophical societies it was the most important, perhaps because it was not merely provincial. All the world came to Soho to meet Boulton, Watt or Small, who were acquainted with the leading men of Science throughout Europe and America." The Midlands Enlightenment dominates the