ABSTRACT

There must have been considerable change between about 1760 and 1850 to allow even the ten instrument-making rms based outside London, identied in Chapter 1, to feel condent enough to display their goods in international exhibitions. This chapter will try to characterize these shifts in the industrial organization and production of the provincial trade. For instance, had there been signicant alterations in the structure of the workforce, or marked differences in the products? Were there improvements in the tools that made the instruments? Did the changes associated with industrialization – such as removal into the factory and the application of power – so evident in the textile industries at this time, impact at all on instrument making? Returning to John Millburn’s agenda for the effective investigation of instrument makers, this chapter will address the questions of the ‘sources of materials and components, their tools, their relationships with their workmen, subcontractors … and each other’.1