Fred Dibnah's Age of Steam - Hardcover

Popular industrial archaeology. An oxymoron? Not when Fred Dibnah writes so engagingly about the early history of steam power. Steam was the force behind the industrial revolution of the 18th century, the basic technology that made Britain the workshop of the world. Dibnah goes into the historical material that will be familiar to many readers from school, but more interestingly explores the extent to which the industrial past is still preserved in old steam locomotives, traction engines and steam-driven mill pumps. The actual work of preservation, of maintaining these fascinating old machines, is the life work of enthusiasts whose passion for mechanisms is at the heart of this fascinating journey into the ever-present industrial past.

Britains favourite steeplejack and industrial enthusiastic, the late 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 Dibnahs 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 this will be the stories of central figures of the time, including James Watts - 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.