http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/389814916

Industrial Revolution: A Documentary History Series One: The Boulton and Watt Archive and the Matthew Boulton Papers from Birmingham Central Library : Part 1. Lunar Society Correspondence

The Correspondence of Matthew Boulton with members of the Lunar Society who held monthly meetings on Monday evenings closest to the full moon so that members could ride home by the light of the moon. Meetings were often held at Boulton's home, Soho House in Birmingham. This correspondence to and from Matthew Boulton covers some of the most prominent men of the period: scientists, inventors, philosophers and thinkers who pooled their thoughts and ideas for the benefit of scientific and technological progress. Matthew Boulton's correspondence with individuals such as Joseph Priestley, James Watt, Sir Joseph Banks, Benjamin Franklin, Josiah Wedgwood, William Small, James Keir, Thomas Beddoes and William Withering reveals the great sense of adventure, enthusiasm and dynamism with which these eminent men, at the vanguard of the Industrial Revolution, threw themselves into their scientific experiments and their business transactions, and the skill with which they organised the tremendous social and economic transformations of the period. The Lunar Society was truly at the heart of scientific and technological problem solving from 1764 onwards. As Roger E. Schofield notes in his book entitled "The Lunar Society of Birmingham" (Oxford 1963) the Lunar Society was " ... a brilliant microcosm of that scattered community of provincial manufacturers and professional men who found England a rural society with an agricultural economy and left it urban and industrial."

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