This is a very important book on the origins of the English Industrial Revolution. Economic and business historians have long reckoned that one of the salient features of this historical turning point was the “mechanization” of production. Yet, the amount of research devoted to the systematic study of the emergence and consolidation of the mechanical engineering industry has been surprisingly scarce. In this context, Gillian Cookson's book represents a very significant addition to this still slim scholarly repertoire. The focus of the book is the textile engineering industry in the North of England. Cookson follows the development path of this industry from its very origins (that is, when the industry was virtually not existent) to the middle of the nineteenth century, when the industry had reached what may be regarded its “fully fledged” form.

Cookson's research, especially in the initial period, faces a major problem of a dearth of sources. As Cookson notes, the textile engineering industry is a “submerged sector,” with most of the available evidence referring to the actions of a few “great men” (either inventors or entrepreneurs) or a few iconic firms (pp. 7–10). The fragmentary nature of the available source materials plays probably a large role in accounting for the relative neglect of the industry by economic historians. Cookson's work shows how careful and painstaking archival research combined with ingenuity and skill in the “triangulation” of different source materials can unearth new chunks of evidence. Furthermore, even partial and limited evidence—when studied using a rigorous and sharp interpretive framework and with an accurate understanding of technological details, as is done in this case—can yield very insightful findings. One may indeed hope that Cookson's careful approach to sources will act as a sort of role model and that other historians will try to apply her methods to revisit the formative phases of other eighteenth-century industries.

Cookson's interpretative framework emphasizes the “community” dimension, which underpinned the long-run evolution of the industry. In this way, her account has the important merit of redressing the emphasis on “heroic” accounts of innovation and entrepreneurship that still characterize much of the popular literature on the Industrial Revolution. In contrast, Cookson's account shows how a constellation of specific beliefs and values can progressively coalesce in a very dynamic “culture of invention,” which represented a constant stimulus for prompting innovations and technical improvements (pp. 183–185).

It is also important to note that this book, besides being an important account of the evolution of the textile engineering industry, contains several general implications for our overall understanding of the Industrial Revolution. The first implication concerns the role played by factor prices (in particular, high real wages) in prompting the generalized mechanization of the English textile industry. This argument has been put forward by Robert Allen in his book The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (2009). Cookson, in her account, remarks instead that the overstretching of putting-out systems facing a growing demand was probably a much more important factor than high wages in drawing the attention of textile entrepreneurs toward the potentialities of mechanical innovations. In this case, Cookson's account is spare and succinct, but, in my view, it flags an important direction for further research on the origins of the Industrial Revolution. The second implication concerns the role that the patent system played in incentivizing the activities of inventors in this period. In this case, some recent contributions such as Sean Bottomley in his recent book, The British Patent System during the Industrial Revolution, 1700–1852 (2014), have argued that the patent system provided a significant incentive for inventive activities and investment. This perspective does not find support in Cookson's account: “in the most dynamic industry of textile engineering, before patent law reform in 1852 patenting was so little used that it cannot have greatly shaped technological development. Indeed, there are obvious cases where patents positively hampered progress in engineering” (p. 203). On this issue, The Age of Machinery resonates well with the work of other historians, such as Christine MacLeod and Petra Moser, who point to other significant cases of inventive activities outside the patent system in this period. Why did textile engineering firms refrain from patenting their inventions? Cookson shows that textile engineering firms could rely on a number of alternative “appropriability” strategies from reaping the returns from their inventive activities, ranging from secrecy to lead times to the construction of goodwill and reputation. Furthermore, in many cases, these strategies could be effectively used in combination.

In sum, this is a rich and insightful book, which will repay careful reading. My only criticism is the lack of a “conclusions” chapter in which the author could have summarized her many findings and explicitly set them against the backdrop of current debates on the origins of the Industrial Revolution. This is done in other sections of the book, but often in a very sobering, almost subdued manner. Hence, a final concluding chapter could have been useful for nonspecialist readers. However, this is indeed just minor nitpicking for a book that, in terms of style and substance, can really stand comparison with classic contributions in the economic history of technology such as those of Nathan Rosenberg, Nick von Tunzelmann, and Joel Mokyr.