ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the geographical and social location of inventive activity in Britain during the Golden Age by utilizing the data produced by the Patent Office and its commissioners between 1840 and 1881. A very large amount of time, effort and money was spent on British patenting during the Golden Age of machinofacture. The chapter also provides some measure of the value of the stock of technological knowledge, some insight into the nature of the information system, estimates of the openness of British technology and its conduits, and a hopefully useful perspective on the vexed questions of rise, decline and fall. The British patent system represented a large, powerful, increasingly efficient, the analysis of which allows the historian to identify instances and patterns of technological transfer to and from the country. Most patenting took place as an individual activity. However, in some cases partnerships and the use of patent agents served to spread and share both information and costs.
