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4 - International trade in machine tools

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2009

Roderick Floud
Roderick Floud
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, University of London
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Summary

In 1851 the British superiority over all other nations was in machine tools, as in many other products, unchallenged.

At the Great Exhibition of 1851 it [Britain] may be said to have been without a rival; the display of machine tools then made by some English houses took the world by surprise. The French and German, and even the American engineers were not prepared for such refinement of form combined with solidity of construction, the several fittings having a degree of precision never seen before, and yet constructed with such severe simplicity of arrangement in every detail, which by general consent placed England above comparison with the rest of the world.

(P.P., 1867–8, p. 341)

This technical superiority, which was coupled with the commercial superiority of firms like Whitworth and Nasmyth, was eroded by foreign competition during the next seventy years, and it is the purpose of this chapter to describe this erosion, to estimate its effect on British sales of machine tools both at home and abroad, and to suggest some explanation.

The sources for a study of international trade in machine tools are limited, and those that exist are deficient in a number of ways. Statistical evidence on the trade is very scarce, at least until the early twentieth century, largely because the trade appears to have been small, at least in comparison with other engineering products.

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Chapter
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The British Machine Tool Industry, 1850–1914 , pp. 68 - 119
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1976

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