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i>The History of British Industry/i> is a magisterial new three-volume story of how the United Kingdom became the world''s first economic superpower - and how that crown slipped...div>p >Business historian Peter Pugh - who has written over 50 histories of British companies from Rolls-Royce to Kwik-Fit - explores in fascinating detail the people, politics, technology and economics of Britain''s industrial heritage./p>p >Pugh begins with what was to become the world''s first industrial revolution, and with Isaac Newton, whose i>Principia Mathematica/i>, published in 1647, laid the foundations of classical mechanics and set the scene for more than a century of British invention./p>p >We meet the well-known pioneers of the age such as Thomas Newcomen, Matthew Boulton and James Watt, but Pugh makes the case too for reappraising lesser-known figures: Joseph Bramah, James Brindley, John Roebuck and Erasmus Darwin./p>p >Pugh also explores the South Sea Bubble, the dotcom boom of the early 1720s which left thousands of investors penniless - not least Isaac Newton himself, who lost the equivalent of £2.2 million./p>/div>
