NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES THE RISE OF THE ENGINEER: INVENTING THE PROFESSIONAL INVENTOR DURING THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Why was the Industrial Revolution successful at generating sustained growth? Some have argued that there was a fundamental change in the way that new technology was developed during this period, but evidence for this argument remains largely anecdotal. This paper provides direct quantitative evidence showing that how innovation and design work was done changed fundamentally during the Industrial Revolution. This change was characterized by the professionalization of innovation and design work through the emergence of the engineering profession. I also propose a theory describing how this change could have acted as one mechanism behind the transition to modern economic growth. W. Walker Hanlon Department of Economics Northwestern University 2211 Campus Drive, 3rd floor Evanston, IL 60208 and NBER walker.hanlon@gmail.com An appendix is available at: http://www.nber. org/data-appendix/w29755 Technological progress played the central role in the Industrial Revolution. Much of the research on innovation during this event has focused on the factors that led to the burst of inventive activity that took place in Britain in second half of the 18th century. Yet, as Joel Mokyr has pointed out, short bursts of technological progress have occurred many times in history. “The true miracle” he argues, “is not that the classical Industrial Revolution happened, but that it did not peter out like so many earlier waves of innovation” (Mokyr, 2004, p. 15). Why was technological progress sustained? Some have argued that the explanation for this miracle of sustained technological progress is that the system through which new technology was developed changed in a fundamental way during the Industrial Revolution. Alfred North Whitehead, for example, believed that, “The great invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention. ” Did such a change in the process of innovation take place during the Industrial Revolution? And if it did, what did the change look like? This paper provides evidence showing that an important change took place in the way that innovation and design work was done in Britain, that the timing of this change corresponds closely to the onset of the Industrial Revolution, and that this change was a specifically British phenomenon. The change I highlight was the professionalization of invention and design work through the emergence of the engineering profession. Engineering work, ranging from the invention of new mechanical devices to the design of new types of infrastructure, had been done before the emergence of professional engineers. However, historical evidence suggests that how engineering work was done changed in a fundamental way in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Watson (1989), in his history of the Society of Civil Engineers, describes how (p. 1), “When John Smeaton described himself as a civil engineer for the first time.he identified a new profession” which combined “The craftsman’s fund of knowledge, based on natural genius and practical experience.with the assimilation of scientific principles. ” Such a change could have important implications for our understanding of this seminal event in economic history. However, current evidence on this change remains largely anecdotal. The primary contribution of this paper is to provide direct Whitehead (1925), p. 96.