American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century
The Search for Labour Saving Inventions

This essay is a foray into the debatable borderland between history, technology and economics.

H. J. Habakkuk (Author)

9780521094474, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 1 October 1967

240 pages
20.3 x 12.7 x 1.4 cm, 0.26 kg

This essay is a foray into the debatable borderland between history, technology and economics. On the history of technical processes there exist several works, pre-eminent among them the great five-volumed History of Technology. But few historians of technology have shown interest in the models of the economists; and the theorists have concentrated on analysis or on problems of contemporary technology. The present work is an attempt to re-examine some of the more familiar nineteenth-century developments in technology. It originated in lectures given at Columbia University in the autumn of 1958.

1. Introduction
2. Labour-saving methods in American industry: the problem
3. The economic effects of labour-scarcity
4. Labour-supplies and technology in the U.S.A.
5. Labour-supplies and technology in Britain
5. Technology and growth in Britain in the later nineteenth century.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1]