Making waves: The Royal Navy's management of invention and innovation in steam shipping, 1815–1832

Abstract This paper explores the sources of invention and innovation in steam shipping, the distribution of funding and risk between the state and the private sector, and the Royal Navy's management of innovation, during the experimental period of steam power's adoption at sea. It identifies two intersecting channels through which steam‐related innovations reached the Royal Navy. First, “packages” of innovations were embedded in the marine engines that were commissioned by the Navy from private engine‐making firms. Secondly, the Navy was spontaneously offered a gamut of ideas and inventions, which varied enormously both in potential importance and in degree of development. Although the mechanisms for dealing with these two channels were different, the end result was much the same ‐ in minimizing both the expense and the risk borne by the public sector. It was principally the private sector that was funding scientific and technological development in this sphere. Recognizing its own lack of expertise and consequent hazard, the Navy Board was developing a systematic yet flexible method of assessing steam‐related inventions ‐ which appears to have served it well.

[1]  Kenneth L. Sokoloff,et al.  Inventive Activity in Early Industrial America: Evidence From Patent Records, 1790–1846 , 1988, The Journal of Economic History.

[2]  Christine MacLeod,et al.  Inventing the Industrial Revolution: The English Patent System, 1660-1800 , 1990 .

[3]  John Law,et al.  Shaping technology building society: studies in socio-technical change , 1993 .

[4]  D. Edgerton.  Science and Technology in British Business History , 1987 .

[5]  R. J.B. Knight,et al.  THE INTRODUCTION OF COPPER SHEATHING INTO THE ROYAL NAVY, 1779–1786 , 1973 .

[6]  Andrew D. Lambert FRHistS.  PREPARING FOR THE LONG PEACE: THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE ROYAL NAVY 1815–1830 , 1996 .

[7]  M. W. Doughty,et al.  THE CHOICE OF STEAM ENGINE MANUFACTURERS BY THE BRITISH ADMIRALTY, 1822–1852 , 1978 .

[8]  T. P. Hughes,et al.  The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology , 1989 .

[9]  Graeme Gooday,et al.  Re‐writing the ‘book of blots’: Critical reflections on histories of technological ‘failure’ , 1998 .

[10]  Christine MacLeod,et al.  Inventing the Industrial Revolution: List of tables and figure , 1988 .

[11]  D. Edgerton,et al.  British industrial research and development before 1945 , 1994 .

[12]  Robert G. Cooper,et al.  Selecting Winning New Product Projects: Using the NewProd System , 1985 .

[13]  J. Harris.  Copper and Shipping in the Eighteenth Century , 1966 .

[14]  Sidney Pollard,et al.  The Genesis of Modern Management: A Study of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain , 1965 .

[15]  David K. Brown,et al.  Before the ironclad : development of ship design, propulsion and armament in the Royal Navy, 1815-60 , 1990 .

[16]  H. Spratt.  The birth of the steamboat , 1958 .

[17]  S. Amussen.  The Sinews of power: war, money and the english state, 1688–1783 , 1993 .

[18]  Andrew Lambert,et al.  Battleships in Transition: The Creation of the Steam Battlefleet, 1815-1860 , 1984 .

[19]  John R. Harris,et al.  Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics , 1984 .

[20]  Thomas Tredgold,et al.  The Steam Engine: Its Invention and Progressive Improvement, an Investigation of Its Principles, and Its Application to Navigation, Manufactures, and Railways , 1838 .

[21]  Annie Canel,et al.  Gaining access, crossing boundaries: Women in engineering in a comparative perspective , 1997 .

[22]  Carolyn C. Cooper,et al.  The Portsmouth System of Manufacture , 1984 .

[23]  C. Macleod.  Negotiating the Rewards of Invention: The Shop-Floor Inventor in Victorian Britain , 1999 .

[24]  Christine MacLeod.  Inventing the Industrial Revolution: Acknowledgements , 1988 .

[25]  N. A. M. Rodger,et al.  The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy , 1987 .