An Early Experiment in Industrial Organisation: Being a History of the Firm of Boulton & Watt, 1775-1805First Published in 1968. This is an account of the Boulton-Watt partnership and adds another item to the now growing series of writings on the history of individual firms or individual pioneers of modern business. The choice of this particular firm is due to three facts: the great importance of the enterprise; the concentration in Birmingham of the bulk of its records (the completeness and state of preservation of which is almost unique), and the lack, notwithstanding the existence of several books on the subject, of any exhaustive history from the economist's standpoint of what must be regarded as the foremost engineering firm of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. |
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A.O. MSS agreement air pumps Appendix Bersham Birmingham boring Boulton & Watt Boulton and Watt brasses Chacewater charges Chipping coal Colin colliery colln considerable copper Cornish Cornwall cost customers cylinder diameter Drilling machine employed engine business engine erectors enquiry erected expenses fact factory firm firm's ibid important improved increase industry interest invention James Watt labour later lathe London M. R. Boulton machinery manufacture Matthew Boulton ment mentioned methods mill mines nozzles Office Letter Book operation organisation paid parallel motions partners partnership patent payment piece-rate pipes piston rods Poldice practice premium production profit records Roebuck share shows skilled Soho Foundry Soho Manufactory specialisation of labour steam engines stuffing box supply technical tion to-day trading accounts Turner Turning usual valves wages Watt Collection Watt to Boulton Watt's engine Wheal Wilkinson William Murdock workers workmen