Boulton & Watt, Soho Manufactory and Spain

2009 marks the bicentenary of the birth of one of Britain’s greatest industrialists, Matthew Boulton (left). The event will be celebrated throughout the year in his native Birmingham, where the Boulton & Watt manufactory, Soho Works, was once famous around the world. The company had what the world wanted – power, the power that came from the steam engines that Boulton’s partner, James Watt (right), had perfected. In empowering the world, the Boulton & Watt manufactory changed people’s lives more radically than anything before or since, even taking modern information technology into account.
In his Euloge for James Watt, published in 1839, the French Catalan scientist and politician François Arago brilliantly summed up the effect of the arrival of steam in the world:


“A TIME WILL COME when the science of destruction shall bend before the arts of peace; when the genius which multiplies our powers, which creates new products, which diffuses comfort and happiness among the great mass of people, shall occupy, in the general estimation of mankind, that rank which reason and common sense now assign to it.
. Then James Watt will appear before the grand jury of the inhabitants of the two worlds. Everyone will behold him, with the help of steam engine, penetrating within a few weeks into the bowels of the earth, to depths which, before his time, could not have been reached without an age of the most toilsome labour, excavating vast mines, clearing them within a few minutes of the immense volume of water which daily inundates them, and extracting from a virgin soil the inexhaustible mineral treasures which nature has there deposited.
. Combining delicacy with power, Watt will twist, with equal success, the huge ropes of the gigantic cable by which the man-of-war rides at anchor in the midst of the raging ocean, and the microscopic filaments of the aerial gauze and lace of which fashionably dresses are so principally formed.
. A few strikes of the same engine will bring vast swamps into cultivation; and fertile countries will also thus be spared the periodical returns of deadly pestilential fevers, caused n those places by the heat of the summer sun.
. The great mechanical powers which has formerly to be sought in mountainous districts, at the foot of rapid cascades, will, thanks to Watt’s invention, readily and easily arise in the midst of towns, on any storey of a house.
. The extent of these powers will vary at the will of the mechanician; it will no longer depend, as heretofore, on the most inconstant of natural causes, on atmosphere influence.
The common branches of each manufacture made be carried on in once common space, under the same roof; and their products, as they are perfectioned, will diminish in price.
. The population well supplied in food, with clothing, and with fuel, will rapidly increase; it will by degrees, cover with elegant mansions, every part of the earth, even those that might justly have been termed the Steppes of Europe, and which the barrenness of ages seemed to condemn to be, forever, the exclusive domain of wild beasts.

In a few years, hamlets will become great towns; in a few years, boroughs such as Birmingham, where there could hardly be counted thirty streets, will take their place among the largest, the handsomest, and the richest cities of a mighty kingdom.
. Installed in ships, the steam engine will exercise a power a hundredfold greater than the triple and quadruple ranks of rowers, of whom our forefathers were wont to exact a labour which is deemed a punishment for the most atrocious criminals.
. By the help of a few bushels of coal, man will vanquish the elements; he will p;ay with calms and contrary winds and storms. The passage from one place to another will be much more speedily accomplished; the moment of the arrival of the packets may be known beforehand, like that of the public coaches; no one will any longer wander on the shore for whole weeks and months, with heart tortured with anguish, watching with restless eye the horizon for the dim outline of the vessel, which is to restore a father, a mother, a brother, or a friend.
. Lastly, the steam engine drawing in its train thousands of travellers, will run on railroad with far greater speed than the swiftest racehorse, carrying only his light jockey.

Such is a very brief sketch of the benefits which have been bequeathed to the world by that machine....which, after so many ingenious efforts, Watt has brought to an admirable perfection"

--o--O--0--

BURNING BARCELONA - The night the old world died

"Go home!" He spat on the ground. "F--k English. Go f---k home!"

. Alice's smile hardened. She was not surprised. "Merry Christmas," she said in a firm voice, in English, and she continued up the Rambla. Any Boulton & Watt engineer worth his salt knew that there was often a bit of trouble when steam was installed.

Whatever the benefits of steam, so admirably described by François Arago, there was a downside, too, for those who felt threatened, and thought that they would be put out of work. Burning Barcelona is the story, based on fact, about what happened when the Barcelona textile manufacturer Josep Bonaplata purchased from Messrs Boulton & Watt the first steam engine to be installed in Spain.

In an ingenious tale of power and passion. Roger Williams re-creates this pivotal moment in the history of Spain
ISBN978-0-9555376-1-5
Published by Bristol Book Publishing
Email publisher@bristolbook.co.uk, tel: +44 (0)20 7358 0044