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The Timing and Pattern of Technological Development in English Agriculture, 1611–1850

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Richard J. Sullivan
Richard J. Sullivan
Affiliation:
The author is Visiting Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie-Mellon University, Schenley Park, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213.
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Abstract

A chronology of invention in farming is given, based on patent data, for England between 1611 and 1850. The chronology is explained using market analysis. Technological constraints determined the timing of some inventions, most notably for fertilizers. Relative input costs explain the early development of the seed drill and the threshing machine. Inventive output also depended on the market for food. The overall level of patents issued was related to the level of population and to changing food prices.The output market for food was influencing invention through of population growth on the advance of farming technology.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-fourth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , June 1985 , pp. 305 - 314
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1985

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References

1 A short history of patent law and more detail on the patent data are given in Sullivan, Richard J., “Measurement of English Farming Technological Change,” Explorations in Economic History, 21 (07 1984), pp. 270–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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3 Fussell, George E., Jethro Tull: His Influence on Mechanized Agriculture (Reading, Penn., 1973), p. 121.Google Scholar

4 The threshing machine illustrates the difficulty in attempting to date invention by decade. Andrew Meikle is credited with inventing the first effective threshing machine (Mingay, George E., “The Agricultural Revolution,” in Mingay, G. E., ed., The Agriculture Revolution: Changes in Agriculture, 1650–1880 [London, 1977], p. 40). Meikie received his patent in 1788.Google Scholar

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12 Wilkes, “Diffusion,” p. 84, 70.Google Scholar Compare the history of coke smelting of iron in Hyde, Charles K., Technological Change and the British Iron industry (Princeton, 1977).Google Scholar

13 This approach is developed in detail in Simon, Julian and Sullivan, Richard J., “Population Size, Knowledge Stock, and Other Determinants of Agricultural Publication and Patenting: England, 1541–1850” (mimeo, Carnegie-Mellon University, 1985).Google Scholar See also Nordhaus, William D., Invention, Growth and Welfare(Cambridge, 1969), chap. 2.Google Scholar

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21 Tull's own description was obscure (Collins, E. J. T., “Harvest Technology and Labour Supply in Britain, 1790–1780,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 22 (12 1969), p. 78).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Existence of the knowledge was necessary but not sufficient to bring forth the invention. On necessity and sufficiency, see Mowery, David C. and Rosenberg, Nathan, “The Influence of Market Demand Upon Innovation,” in Rosenberg, N., Inside the Black Box (Cambridge, 1982)Google Scholar, chap. 10. Wilkes (“Diffusion,” p. 94) thinks a lack of demand accounts for the lack of use of the drill until the 1840s.Google Scholar

22 This induced bias theory starts with Hicks, John R., The Theory of Wages (New York, 1932), pp. 124–25.Google Scholar

23 Of 206 work days for farm laborers in the eighteenth century, 130 were spent threshing. Other farm activities and number of days: plowing and sowing, 12 days; harvesting grain, 28 days; making hay, 24 days; various other tasks, 12 days. From Slicher van Bath, B. H., “The Influence of Economic Conditions on the Development of Agricultural Machines and Tools in History,” in Meij, J. L., ed., Mechanization in Agriculture (Amsterdam, 1960), pp. 9–10.Google Scholar

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31 Based on Mokyr, Joel, “Demand vs. Supply in the Industrial Revolution,” this JOURNAL, 37 (12. 1977), p. 1008, equation (6). Nonlabor share of income and income elasticity of demand for agricultural goods are for 1801 and are his as well, p. 988.Google Scholar

32 Wrigley, E. A. and Schofield, Roger S., The Population History of England, 1841–1871 (Cambridge, 1981).Google Scholar

33 Savings in seed based on Tull's experience given above. Yield: seed ratio taken from Slicher van Bath, B. H., “Agriculture in the Vital Revolution,” in Rich, E. E. and Wilson, C. H., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe (Cambridge, 1977), vol. 5, chap. 2, p. 81. If 90 percent of your output went to market using nondrill techniques and 96.66 percent of it went to market using the drill, the effective food supply rises by 6.66/90 x 100 = 7.4 percent. Wilkes disagrees with Slicher van Bath's view that overall yields do not drop, as Tull himself admitted his crops were not as large.Google Scholar See Wilkes, “Diffusion,” p. 67.Google Scholar

34 Estimated for 1661–1850 using ordinary least squares. Period of observation is the decade. Estimated t-values in parentheses. Population figures from Wrigley and Schofield, Population History;Google Scholar food prices calculated from Phelps-Brown, E. H. and Hopkins, Sheila V., A Perspective of Wages and Prices (New York, 1981).Google Scholar

35 These results must be taken with a large grain of salt. The estimated elasticity between population and patents seems very large; I believe it is because of an important omitted variable, available technology. See Simon and Sullivan, “Population Size.” The regression is useful for the purpose of the next paragraph.Google Scholar

36 The estimated error term is smaller than the standard error of the estimate.Google Scholar

37 Total number of patents issued in the 1830s was 2,712, and 4,664 in the 1840s. Calculated from Woodcroft, Bennet, Chronological Listing of Patents of Invention (London, 1857).Google Scholar

38 I appreciate Peter Schran's suggestion on this.Google Scholar

39 Ernle, English Farming, pp. 349–76.Google Scholar