2023年7月17日发(作者：)

England before the Industrial Revolution

The country was a place where men worked from dawn to dark，and the laborer lived not in

the sun，but in poverty and darkness. What aids there were to lighten labor were immemorial，like

the mill, which was already ancient in Chaucer’s time. The Industrial Revolution began with such

machines；The millwrights were the engineers of the coming age. James Brindley of Staffordshire

started his self—made career in l733 by working at mill wheels，at the age of seventeen，having

been born poor in a village.

Brindley’s improvements were practical：to sharpen and step up the performance of the water

wheel as a machine. That was the first multi-purpose machine for the new industries. Bindley

worked, for example, to improve the grinding of flints, which were used in the rising pottery

industry.

Yet there was a bigger movement in the air by l750. Water had become the engineers’ element,

and men like Brindley were possessed by it. Water was gushing and fanning out all over the

countryside. It was not simply a source of power，it was a new wave of movement. James Brindley

was a pioneer in the art of building canals or, as it was then called, ‘navigation'.

Brindley had begun on his own account, out of interest, to survey the waterways that he

travelled as he went about his engineering projects for mills and mines. The Duke of Bridgewater

then got him to build a canal to carry coal from the Duke's pits at Worsley to the rising town of

Manchester…… Brindley went on to connect Manchester with Liverpool in an even bolder

manner, and in all laid out almost four hundred miles of canals in a network all over England.

Two things are outstanding in the creation of the English system of canals, and they

characterize all the Industrial Revolution. One is that the men who made the revolution were

practical men. Like Brindley, they often had little education, and in fact school education as it then

was could only dull an inventive mind. The grammar schools legally could only teach the classical

subjects for which they had been founded. The universities also （there were only two, at Oxford

and Cambridge） took little interest in modern or scientific studies; and they were closed to those

who did not conform to the Church of England.

The other outstanding feature is that the new inventions were for everyday use. The canals

were arteries of communication: They were not made to carry pleasure boats, but barges. And the

barges were not made to carry luxuries, but pots and pans and bales of cloth, boxes of ribbon, and

all the common things that people buy by the pennyworth. These things had been manufactured in

villages which were growing into towns now, away from London; it was a country-wide trade.

工业革命前的英格兰

这个国家是一个人们从黎明到夜晚都在不断工作的地方，劳动者不是生活在阳光下，而是在贫困和黑暗中挣扎。在这个国家里协助人们生产的工具非常古老，比如在乔叟时代就早已存在的碾磨机。工业革命是从这些机器开始;碾磨机的匠人就是开创新时代的工程师。1733年，斯塔福德郡的詹姆斯·布林德利在磨坊工作时开始了他自制工具的生涯，其时他年仅17岁，生于乡村，素来贫寒。

布林德利对磨轮的改进是切实可用的：加上水轮，从而提高水磨的效能，使其成为一种机器。这是新型工业的第一台多用途机器。例如，布林德利的工作改进了对燧石的研磨，原先这种研磨用于正在兴起的制陶工业中。

然而，到了1750年，一场更大的运动已经在酝酿中。水已成为工程师手中的元素，和布林德利一样的人都在思考如何利用水力。在乡村，流水潺潺、四处可见。它不是简单的一种能源，而是是新一波的运动。詹姆斯·布林德利是一位运河建设艺术的先驱，或者如当时那样称之为“导航”。

布林德利在为他的磨坊和矿井建筑工程到处奔走的时候,出于自愿和兴趣,对沿途经过的河道进行了勘察。随后，布里奇沃特公爵让布林德利在自己处于沃斯利的矿井和正在兴起的曼彻斯特镇之间修建一条运河，方便运煤......布林德利开始以一种更大胆的方式连接利物浦与曼彻斯特，并且奠定了整个英格兰总计近四百英里运河网络的基础。

在修建英国运河网络的过程中,有两点是非常突出的,它们也正是整个工业革命的特点。特点之一是，进行变革的人都是实用主义者。和布林德利一样，他们往往几乎没有接受教育，而实际上当时的学校教育只会使创造性的头脑变得笨拙。合法的文法学校只能教他们早已成立的古典科目。各大学（仅牛津大学和剑桥大学两所学校）也对现代或科学研究甚少，他们中间不符合英国的教会要求的还会被关闭。

另一个突出特点是，新发明的目的在于日常使用。运河交通干线是为了承载驳船，而不是游艇。驳船的建造不是为了运输奢侈品，而是锅碗瓢盆、布、丝带，和人们日常购买的所有普通物什。这些曾在乡村生产的东西已经流入伦敦之外的城镇，这是全国范围内的贸易。

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