I'd like to tell you the extraordinary story of one of history's greatest spies.

Not exactly in the mould of James Bond, but a master of industrial espionage. His name was John Holker. Holker was a skilled cloth manufacturer in 1740s Manchester. But he was also a Catholic - at time when they were second-class citizens - and a Jacobite.
He believed in the claim of the Catholic descendants of the deposed king James II, rather than George II, to rule Great Britain

The UK today: a major announcement on nuclear energy is actually just "we'll be doing lots of consultations".

We're a Consultation Nation. So we never actually get anything built. The Lower Thames Crossing had FIVE consultations 2017-22, still doesn't have planning permission. Take Local Plans - not even actual building, but just what kind of building might be done. The Yorkshire Dales for example finished its FIFTH consultation for a local plan. Must be advanced, you think. Nope, it's "about engaging stakeholders on the direction of policy travel"

Interesting note from parliamentary diaries of John Pym. In April 1621 a sub-committee ordered "that every Company of Merchants should make choice of them amongst them to give a brief of the state of their trade with reasons of the increase or decay"
Like a modern consultation! Spanish Company [English merchants trading with Spain]: complain that prices of their serge and perpetuana cloths have fallen from £4 a piece to just 24 shillings, but the customs of 9s per piece have stayed the same. Discredit of other "stuffs" means nobody is buying them.

Having a lot of fun reading through the experiments of one of my all-time favourite inventors:

Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford "The first step towards acquiring knowledge is undoubtedly that which leads us to a discovery of the falsehood of received opinions."

My latest post, on the frenzied accession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne - crucial context for the history of patents.

antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-inven… This is, in effect, Part IV of my series on the Statue of Monopolies. It was meant to go further, but the changes in James’s style of rule were just too fun to skip - like the Oprah of honours. YOU get a knighthood, and YOU get a knighthood, and YOU!

Currently reading The Merchants Mappe of Commerce (1638), by Lewes Roberts.

Quite fascinating. A guide to how to be a merchant, by an expert (he was heavily involved in the eastern Mediterranean trade). And contains some wonderful defences of trade. "Merchandizing may well be said to be an art or science invented by ingenious mankind, for the public good, commodity and welfare of all Commonwealths"

Today's #InventionQuiz. What is this?

No googling. I'll give the answer later. And please share the quiz. Answer: it is, in fact, a better mousetrap! Built by James Skinner in 1826.

Possible candidate for most influential person in England in mid-16thC:

Sebastian Cabot

Increasingly certain - his name just keeps on cropping up! - that he was responsible for the introduction of patents, and joint stock companies, not to mention England’s age of exploration Probably born in Venice (though he thought Bristol), Cabot was one of the major pioneers of celestial navigation, pretty much being poached back from Spanish service in the 1540s so that England could become a maritime nation (strange to think it, but before then it was not)

Today I've fallen down the Venetian 15thC patents rabbit hole. One of my hunches proving correct: that what we would now call copyright was indistinguishable at the time from a patent. One thing that's also especially curious is that the early privileges for printing books in England were granted, not with the onerous procedure of obtaining a full patent under the Great Seal, but "by placard". Wondering if there were any inventions privileged by placard...

Who invented the steam engine?

The usual answer focuses on British inventors like Thomas Newcomen, or Thomas Savery. They were both active in the late 17thC.

But there's also a much earlier, Spanish claimant... (Thread)

antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-inven… The claimant is Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont, an aristocrat and military engineer from Navarre.

He managed the Spanish royal mines, and in the late 16thC invented a host of devices, from diving equipment and mine ventilation systems, to improved mills, pumps, and furnaces.

You see blue plaques dotted all over Britain, commemorating such-and-such a famous person who lived in a building. They seem, at first glance, just a nice reminder of history.

But that was not their original purpose. And nor were they always blue. A thread. The idea began in the 1860s, with the utilitarian MP William Ewart. His claim to fame, in the 1850s, had been to pass laws enabling local authorities to raise taxes to pay for public museums and libraries.

And with the plaques, he had similar educational aims.

Because of colonialism and widespread printing, we know a lot about what Europeans thought of Asia in the 17th and 18th centuries

But what did Asian visitors think of Europe?

A thread: Early Asian visitors to Europe unfortunately very rarely left records. But sometimes, even the smallest fragments tell us volumes.

Take Michael Shen Fuzong, a Chinese convert to Catholicism, who came to Europe in the 1680s to become a Jesuit priest.

antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-inven…

A personal story about copyright, and why it needs reform.

At Christmas time last year, my book publisher got in touch to just double-check that we had the rights to use the image they were going to use for the cover. This one: To my horror, I discovered that I had actually hugely misread UK copyright law, and had to scramble over the holiday break to make sure I had the rights to ALL the illustrations in time.

And for the most part, this was easy.

Many people know @PrueLeith for her cookery, nowadays as a judge on the Great British Bake-Off.

But did you know that she was also responsible for the temporary modern sculptures on Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth?

All because of the wacky world of @theRSAorg. A thread: It began in the 1980s when Leith joined the Royal Society of Arts, the subject of my book (linked).

amazon.co.uk/Arts-Minds-Soc…

Initially, she was interested in its promotion of hands-on skills like cooking: she was horrified that many kids couldn't even boil an egg.

Patents have problems. They give 20-year monopolies on inventions, which can sometimes be used to block further innovation.

But they also provide important incentives to make the details of inventions public.

So how might we get the benefits without the costs? A thread: One way to do so would be to heed Nobel-prize-winning economist Michael Kremer.

He came up with a fascinating policy in 1998, which he called the patent buyout.

tenentrepreneurs.org/blog/bringing-…

Reading an Ottoman ambassador's account of France from 1721. Most charming thing so far is pages upon pages of wonderment at the Canal du Midi.

Describes in great detail how locks work, that it crossed another river by bridge, and especially how it went through a mountain. "It deserves to be numbered among the wonders of the world, and one must have seen it to write and speak of it effectively"

In the early 19thC, the state essentially spent its money on two things: war, and paying off the debt from previous wars.

Yet by the end of the century, it was involved in public health, sanitation, education, museums, design, and more.

How? A thread extracted from my book: Take Britain and state education. Since the 1820s, a handful of radical and utilitarian members of Parliament like William Ewart had tried to persuade the government to fund new schools, museums, and public libraries.

But their success was limited.

You've probably heard of the Great Exhibition of 1851, the first World's Fair, held in the remarkable Crystal Palace.

It had 6 million visitors, and took place in the largest enclosed structure that had ever been built.

But what was it actually for? A thread: The idea of an exhibition in Britain originated in the 1840s, led by the civil engineer Francis Whishaw, who was also secretary of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (@theRSAorg) - the subject of my book, just out: amazon.co.uk/Arts-Minds-Soc…

When you think of the Industrial Revolution, you might think of soot-belching factories and squalid cities.

But just as some inventors pioneered the use of factories, other inventors sought solutions to industrialisation's social ills.

So why aren't they more famous? A thread: The more famous inventors are Watt and his steam engines, or Arkwright and his cotton-spinning machines. But the Industrial Revolution was a much broader tide of accelerating innovation, from agriculture to watchmaking, and everything inbetween.

Including safety improvements.

When it comes to attracting the top scientists, engineers and inventors, the UK takes the approach of build-it-and-they-will-come. It lowers barriers to entry or makes the country more attractive to immigrants.

But historically, it has been much, much more proactive.

Thread: For centuries, the UK proactively identified and persuaded particular skilled workers to settle in the country. They weren't just lowering barriers; they were poaching - a policy I like to call promigration.

Take England's copper industry, which by the 19thC was world-beating.

Inventors are in a race with the coronavirus. The faster they can develop vaccines or antivirals, or ramp up production of ventilators and testing kits, or come up with ways to reduce its social effects, the less deadly it will be.

So, how can we increase the rate of innovation? Many governments simply pour more money into the problem. The European Commission allocated €164m to companies finding solutions, and the UK alone has poured £46m into vaccines and testing kits, as well as 500k to support people staying at home.

But there's more they can do.