The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World

By Jenny Uglow

Book Overview

From the celebrated author of Hogarth--An animated, swarming group portrait of the friends who launched the Industrial Revolution In the 1760s a group of amateur experimenters met and made friends in the English Midlands. Most came from humble families, all lived far from the center of things, but they were young and their optimism was boundless: together they would change the world. Among them were the ambitious toymaker Matthew Boulton and his partner James Watt, of steam-engine fame; the potter Josiah Wedgwood; the larger-than-life Erasmus Darwin, physician, poet, inventor, and theorist of evolution (a forerunner of his grandson Charles). Later came Joseph Priestley, discoverer of oxygen and fighting radical. With a small band of allies they formed the Lunar Society of Birmingham (so called because it met at each full moon) and kick-started the Industrial Revolution. Blending science, art, and commerce, the Lunar Men built canals; launched balloons; named plants, gases, and minerals; changed the face of England and the china in its drawing rooms; and plotted to revolutionize its soul. Uglow's vivid, exhilarating account uncovers the friendships, political passions, love affairs, and love of knowledge (and power) that drove these extraordinary men. It echoes to the thud of pistons and the wheeze and snort of engines and brings to life the tradesmen, artisans, and tycoons who shaped and fired the modern age.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374194408
• ISBN13: 9780374194406
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Length: 608 Pages
• Weight: 2.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 2.0" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Outstanding Insights

This is an outstanding book. Yes, it can be difficult to keep track of all the characters, and yes, it takes some patience to work your way through the events of so many lives. But there are three big rewards here, each of which alone will fully justify the time and effort of your reading. First, these were wonderful men, full of curiosity and imagination, ambition, and very human failings as well, and a wonderful inspiration for our own lives. Second, the historical view of this part of the early industrial revolution is history at its best, both personal and contextual, and much richer than anything I encountered in school. The third reward is somewhat less developed, but equally profound and relevant for our own future: the description of the reaction and intolerance in England that set in in the 1790's, and which societies seem to go through periodically. Much to think about!

first impressions ...

What's so interesting is to learn about the intellectual excitement in investigating sciences that hadn't yet become the provinces of academics and professionals. It makes me think of the enthusiasm surrounding digital and computer technologies--most of the interesting stuff in those areas is done outside of academia. Innovations can come from anywhere. It's also interesting to learn that these 18th century folks from the midlands lived so large and traveled so much abroad. I suppose they weren't just ordinary people, but still it's surprising. I suppose the innovations of the midland potters and "toy" makers were the iPods and mobile phones of their day. There are also some writing gems in this book. I like this about James Watt on page 101: "Standing on the Green, which on weekdays was white with linen laid out to bleach, the realization 'flashed on his mind at once, and filled him with rapture'. But it was the Sabbath, and no good Presbyterian could work. The grass was bare of cloth and Watt had to wait."

A Story Of The Right Place And The Right Time

A fantastically intriguing book for anyone with a decent sense of science and the industrial revolution who wants to explore a finely researched set of biographical stories about a group of the earliest of the wild amateur experimenters. The Lunar Society's remarkable set of characters (Darwin's grandfather, Priestley, Watt, Wedgwood) are like a who's who of the famous. The reading is a wonderful dive into the heady days of a new cultural paradigm similar to the recent silicon valley and dot.com phenomena. Literally everything they touched turned to gold.....a great story of a small group of thinkers who were in the right place at the right time to make a marvelous series of things happen.

Scientific Friends Sparking the Industrial Revolution

Many books, especially Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, have given insight into the London club and coffee house conversations devoted to literature and wit. At the same time were meeting in the city of Birmingham a diverse group of men who were involved in scientific efforts for their careers, and even more importantly, were pushing scientific investigation into all areas as a hobby, and who met for what one called "a little philosophical laughing." They called themselves the Lunar Society, because they had their meetings (dinner at two, continuing into the night) every month on a date near the full moon. (This was not a convention merely for scientific men; music concerts and assemblies were customarily clustered within the nights of the month when a bright moon might assist the audience in getting home.) They are the subject of _The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World_ (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), a large and detailed history by Jenny Uglow. Uglow has given us a look at London in her fine biography of Hogarth a few years ago; now we have Birmingham, and the boundless optimism of serious scientific amateurs. Uglow demonstrates that they really did change the world, bringing on the industrial revolution and making science the way to get things done.The locale of Birmingham in the eighteenth century was made for such bustling men, for manufacturing had taken hold. One of the Lunar Men was Matthew Boulton, who at age eighteen invented just the thing for fashion, the inlaying of steel buckles with enamel. He became an industrialist whose patronage helped further the inventor James Watt. Watt was busy as a young man trying to prevent the primitive steam engines from wasting energy, and having done that spent his life perfecting them, installing them around the country, and trying to keep others from stealing his ideas. Josiah Wedgwood, the great manufacturing potter, also had a practical interest in science in such matters as regulating his kilns. He also had a particular interest in the Lunar Men's project of the canal system, which was a focus for their technological and geological enthusiasms, as a way of getting raw materials to his factories and finished wares to London. Perhaps the figure most central within the book is Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of the founder of the theory of evolution. Erasmus himself had a primitive idea about evolution, and his ideas about competition were similar to those of Malthus, who would inspire Charles Darwin's central thesis. Joseph Priestley experimented with gases and identified oxygen (under the eventually discarded phlogiston theory), as well as discovering the fundamentals of photosynthesis and inventing soda water. He was as well a dissenting minister, within the Unitarian church, and his house was burned by the mobs rioting against intellectualism (there were fears that the philosophers would institute changes like those of the French Revolution), and his eventual self-ex