Fascinating Dyson

James Dyson gave the Dimbleby lecture this week. He made a powerful case for engineering and manufacturing in the the UK and talked about the culturally destructive nature of being surrounded by things we did not make. He strongly attacked the idea that we could survive on services in a "post-industrial" age. The BBC has published a digest of the lecture at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4081937.stm

One idea that he advanced was entirely new to me. He reminded us of Britain's industrial past. In 1600, China produced one third of the world's output of manufactured goods and Britain produced effectively nothing. By 1800, with 2% of the world's population, Britain produced half of the world's output. What was new to me was Dyson's argument that this was a fluke and not due to the innate superiority of British inventiveness. He pointed out that we simply ran out of wood! The world economy prior to the Industrial Revolution had been wood-driven. We built from wood and we heated from wood. We also used Charcoal for smelting. Around 1700, we ran out and the goverment imposed strict limits on the use of wood in order to conserve what was left for shipbuilding and other essential uses.

In desperation, we turned to coal and brick and iron. But these required totally new methods of extraction and creation and so we were driven to invent, for example, the steam engine to give us the power to drive the mines. He argued that any country in our position would have had to industrialise or die and that it was chance that we got there first.

If this thesis is correct, it does address something that has always puzzled me: why here? Why, given all the intelligent people there must have been all over the world did Britain suddenly surge ahead and create the world we see today. Surely a better-resourced country would have been a more likely candidate. Dyson may have explained this.