This chapter begins with a discussion of some of the issues that require clarification before a proper investigation of the merits of Joel Mokyr's argument in favour of an Industrial Enlightenment can be mounted. It outlines a case for a significant expansion of the natural knowledge base, which involve the West Midlands cast of savantsand fabricants and are drawn from the rapidly evolving fields of late eighteenth-century metallurgical chemistry and physics. The chapter examines the purveyors and consumers of useful knowledge and the mechanisms of exchange that facilitated the gestation of productive technologies. It explores the physical transfer of technology via the movement of men and machines. The challenge to the traditional notion that technology was little more than science applied developed most vigorously in the 1980s as a by-product of the shift in scholars' interests away from outcomes and towards the practice of scientific enquiry.