When, in the 21st century, we congratulate ourselves on the progress of humankind, it’s no bad thing to look back over 200 years to the Enlightenment. This was a time of intellectual discovery, of excitement in new things, of not bothering about intellectual boundaries and whether one knew much about a particular topic, before wading in.
Matthew Boulton was a giant of the Enlightenment in Britain. A businessman across a range of products from fine silver, to ornaments; mechanical copier of paintings for the not-so-well-off who had pretensions to ape the aristocracy; maker of a huge range of knick-knackery and, perhaps best known as partner and promoter of James Watt in the steam engine business.
And it didn’t stop there. Yes, Boulton did become a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) as did James Watt but, more engagingly, he was a founder of what came to be known as The Lunar Society, an informal, by invitation, Midlands-based dining club of like-minded men. No more than 14 of them. Good food and copious quantities of fine wine at Boulton’s Soho House on the outskirts of Birminghamoiled the wheels for scientific conversation. No streetlights existed in those days so meetings were held at the time of the full moon so as to assist folk in the journeys home. Hence their unofficial name. No Minutes were kept and the only rule we know about was the tolerance of differences of opinion: whether on science or religion or politics. Members included Dr Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles, who was to write On the Origin of Species; Josiah Wedgwood, potter; Joseph Priestley, non-conformist minister and scientist, and others less well known today. Boulton was a jovial and generous host to his Lunar friends, as he was to visitors to his Soho Manufactory, a state-of-the-art complex from which his different products were made (all the larger parts of steam engines were made by a range of other specialist suppliers).
In his partnership with James Watt it was Boulton who held out for the opportunity to ‘make engines for the whole world’ – a dream achieved in part during his lifetime. Watt’s engine was, at first, only for pumping - and there was a large market for this in the Cornish copper mines. But Boulton badgered Watt to devise a means of generating rotative power to replace the waterwheels which, until then, had driven the mills in the rapidly growing cotton industry. He recognised that the men ofLancashirewere ‘steam mill mad’. Boulton knew that manufacturers in different industries needed role-models in the adoption of steam power, so he set about identifying leaders such as Wedgwood in pottery, Whitbread in brewing, and many others. He even became a partner with Watt and others in a huge steam corn mill project inLondon. Albion Mill was the largest steam corn mill (there had been a few earlier experiments with old common engines) and was a wonderful advertisement. Until it was destroyed by fire – not byLondonmillers who were, understandably, alarmed - but by combustion ignited by sparks from the stones used in milling.
By the time of Boulton’s death in 1809 Britain’s Industrial Revolution, the first in the world, was well under way.