In this book, Britain’s favourite steeplejack and industrial enthusiastic Fred Dibnah takes us back to the 18th century when the invention of the steam engine gave an enormous impetus to the development of machinery of all types.
He reveals how the steam engine provided the first practical means of generating power from heat to augment the old sources of power (from muscle, wind and water) and provided the main source of power for the Industrial Revolution.
In “Fred Dibnah’s Age of Steam” Fred shares his passion for steam and meets some of the characters who devote their lives to finding, preserving and restoring steam locomotives, traction engines and stationary engines, mill workings and pumps.
Combined with are the stories of central figures of the time, including James Watt – inventor of the steam engine and Richard Trevithick who played a key role in the expansion of industrial Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Details
Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: BBC Books (3 Jul 2003)
ISBN-10: 0563487437
ISBN-13: 9780563487432
Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16.6 x 2.4 cm
Fred Dibnah grew up in an industrial landscape of factories and mills with giant chimney stacks, steam engines hidden within them, coal driving them. From the beginning of the Victorian age to the middle of the 20th century, Lancashire was at the heart of the Age of Steam.
Dibnah’s history of steam power, which ties in with the BBC TV series, begins well before we might expect, tracing ideas from Hero of Alexandria through Isaac Newton to the eccentric pioneer Newcomen. It details the dramatic leaps forward taken by Watt and Stephenson which brought the railway network, and the spectacular age of steam-driven ships: the massive ocean liners with metal hulls built according to the vision of Dibnah’s greatest hero, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. But Dibnah also covers less obvious aspects of this revolution, such as steam-powered road vehicles, and the more recent age of the steam-turbine, developed by Charles Parsons – one of the least celebrated but most important steam technologists. As one would expect of Dibnah, his style is down to earth yet steeped in expertise born of a natural curiosity for how things work: the hardware, the underlying principles and the imaginations of the inventors.
This is inevitably an elegiac book, loving testimony to a seemingly lost era of beautiful machines and elegant engineering. But at the same time it reminds us of a simple and powerful technology which still has much to offer, being dependent ultimately on water and heat. Dibnah points out that the era of steam is not really over, although the buildings are now empty shells – or museums, or art galleries – and the machinery that he loved is now almost vanished. Steam is still with us. Even nuclear power stations generate energy using the principles of steam power. Moreover, the pollution associated with the era of heavy machinery arose from coal, not from the clean technology of steam, which is well suited to the environmentally aware 21st century.
This is an engaging tribute to an important industry and its powerful and beautiful machines. If you’re inspired to pursue the subject further, an appendix lists where one can see steam engines today in Britain.
hi my grandmother had a pic with shela dibnah and i will love it for my life