Inventive Activity in the British Textile Industry, 1700–1800

Abstract

An analysis of innovations in the eighteenth-century British textile industry is the basis for an evaluation of aggregate studies of invention during the Industrial Revolution, derived from patent evidence alone. Disaggregation of the data challenges recent generalizations concerning the pace and pattern of technical change over the period. Discontinuities in the nature of invention, promoting an acceleration in total factor productivity growth, are traced to the 1790s. Prior to that date, industrial development conformed to a pattern of Smithian growth, as manufacturers diversified their output in response to an expanding domestic market for consumer goods.