ABSTRACT
John Wilkinson, the third member of the self-styled 'Steam Engine Parliament' of the 1770s and 1780s, has never received biographical attention on the scale accorded to Boulton and Watt, although many accurate, and some inaccurate, details of his life are among the common currency of economic history. The ironmaster's private morals might have been ignored, but his worldly success was based on business practices not of a kind to encourage the virtues preached by the author of Self-help, Character and Duty. In January 1774, John Wilkinson took out his famous patent for a new method of boring iron cannon from solid castings by rotating the piece to be bored and keeping the boring bar steady, thus making possible the production of lighter and more accurate weapons. John's father, Isaac, who died at Bristol insolvent and estranged from his famous son in 1784, was a migratory ironmaster of a type common in the early eighteenth century.
