INDUSTRIAL BIOGRAPHY


Iron Workers and Tool Makers


by Samuel Smiles


PREFACE.

The Author offers the following book as a continuation, in a more
generally accessible form, of the Series of Memoirs of Industrial Men
introduced in his Lives of the Engineers. While preparing that work
he frequently came across the tracks of celebrated inventors,
mechanics, and iron-workers--the founders, in a great measure, of the
modern industry of Britain--whose labours seemed to him well worthy
of being traced out and placed on record, and the more so as their
lives presented many points of curious and original interest. Having
been encouraged to prosecute the subject by offers of assistance from
some of the most eminent living mechanical engineers, he is now
enabled to present the following further series of memoirs to the
public.

Without exaggerating the importance of this class of biography, it
may at least be averred that it has not yet received its due share of
attention. While commemorating the labours and honouring the names of
those who have striven to elevate man above the material and
mechanical, the labours of the important industrial class to whom
society owes so much of its comfort and well-being are also entitled