After the great inventions: technological change in UK cotton spinning, 1780–1835

This article analyses the improvement of cotton-spinning technologies in years after great inventions Hargreaves, Arkwright, and Crompton. While these ‘macro-inventions’ have attracted considerable historical attention, our understanding major changes types sizes spinning machines used UK between 1780s onset state-collected factory statistics 1830s is still largely based on experience high-profile firms or specific regions. A new dataset 1,465 machinery advertisements published newspapers England, Scotland, Ireland 1780 1835 allows us to examine temporal spatial dimensions market for machinery, timings transitions different machines, increases machine size. The demonstrates importance post-invention technical improvements cotton industry, showing that productivity associated with initial transition from hand been overstated larger gains were made ‘micro-invention’ phase, when became faster, required fewer workers operate them.