Economic history of Birmingham

Matthew Boulton, in 1770, claimed that Birmingham's superiority as a manufacturing town was largely due to the "superactivity" of the people, and the "mechanical contrivances and extensive apparatus which we are possess'd of".

The use of hand-operated machinery and division of labour (which might see a button pass through fifty hands in the course of manufacture) was commented on by many visitors to Birmingham.

Pins, jewellery and papier-mâché were also produced in large quantities in the city, and goods of all sorts were exported to North America and Europe (Boulton, in the same year, claimed that half his correspondence was in German).

[2] As early as 1755, Sarehole Mill was leased by Matthew Boulton, one of the pioneers of the Industrial Revolution and leading figure of the Lunar Society, for scientific experimentation.

The long-established industrial processes in the city meant that it was actually quite late in adopting the methods of the Industrial Revolution – manufacturing was so efficient and workshops so small that the steam engine, developed in Birmingham by Boulton and James Watt around 1770, did not find widespread use in the city for another sixty years (in 1815, there were only about forty steam engines in the town, many very small).