William Fairbairn: The Experimental Engineer: A Study in Mid 19th-Century Engineering

摘要

Awarded the Association for Industrial Archaeology's prestigious Peter Neaverson Award in September 2018. Of the three colossi that dominate nineteenth-century engineering history William Fairbairn poses the most formidable biographical prospect. The diverse areas to which he applied his engineering and investigatory talents were all nascent and evaluating his lasting contribution calls for a long perspective across a range of subsequently specialized fields. Recent biographical studies of other eighteenth- and nineteenth-century engineers have dealt with a similar problem by assembling into a single volume a series of essays contributed by specialists. This approach, whilst providing perceptive insights often sacrifices unity and imposes boundaries which only developed subsequently. Under the sole authorship of Richard Byrom, William Fairbairn: The Experimental Engineer successfully navigates these hazards and the result is one of the most authoritative studies of nineteenth-century engineering to have appeared in recent years.