The Project Gutenberg EBook of Industrial Biography, by Samuel Smiles

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Title: Industrial Biography
Iron Workers and Tool Makers

Author: Samuel Smiles

Release Date: March 6, 2008 [EBook #404]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INDUSTRIAL BIOGRAPHY ***

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INDUSTRIAL BIOGRAPHY

Iron Workers and Tool Makers

by Samuel Smiles

(This etext was produced from a reprint of the 1863 first edition)

PREFACE.

The Author offers the following book as a continuation, in a more
generally accessible form, of the Series of Memoirs of Industrial Men
introduced in his Lives of the Engineers. While preparing that work he
frequently came across the tracks of celebrated inventors, mechanics,
and iron-workers--the founders, in a great measure, of the modern
industry of Britain--whose labours seemed to him well worthy of being
traced out and placed on record, and the more so as their lives
presented many points of curious and original interest. Having been
encouraged to prosecute the subject by offers of assistance from some
of the most eminent living mechanical engineers, he is now enabled to
present the following further series of memoirs to the public.

Without exaggerating the importance of this class of biography, it may
at least be averred that it has not yet received its due share of
attention. While commemorating the labours and honouring the names of
those who have striven to elevate man above the material and
mechanical, the labours of the important industrial class to whom
society owes so much of its comfort and well-being are also entitled to
consideration. Without derogating from the biographic claims of those
who minister to intellect and taste, those who minister to utility need
not be overlooked. When a Frenchman was praising to Sir John Sinclair
the artist who invented ruffles, the Baronet shrewdly remarked that
some merit was also due to the ma