Andrew Ure - Philosophy of Manufactures (1836)

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The present volume, introductory to a series of works in more ample detail, is submitted to the public as a specimen of the manner in which the author conceives technological subjects should be discussed.

Andrew Ure
Manufacture is a word, which, in the vicissitude of language, has come to signify the reverse of its intrinsic meaning, for it now denotes every extensive product of art, which is made by machinery, with little or no aid of the human hand ; so that the most perfect manufacture is that which dispenses entirely with manual labour.

Andrew Ure
It is in a cotton mill, however, that the perfection of automatic industry is to be seen ; it is there that the elemental powers have been made to animate millions of complex organs, infusing into forms of wood, iron, and brass an intelligent agency.

Andrew Ure
A mechanical manufacture being commonly occupied with one substance, which it conducts through metamorphoses in regular succession may be made nearly automatic ; whereas a chemical manufacture depends on the play of delicate affinities between two or more substances, which it has to subject to heat and mixture under circumstances somewhat uncertain, and must therefore remain, to a corresponding extent, a manual operation.

Andrew Ure
Being advised by his medical friends to try the effects of travelling, with light intellectual exercise, he left London in the latter end of last summer, and spent several months in wandering through the factory districts of Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, &c., with the happiest results to his health ; having everywhere experienced the utmost kindness and liberality from the mill-proprietors.

Andrew Ure
The processes that may be employed, to give to portions of inert matter, precise movements resembling those of organized beings, are innumerable, as they consist of an indefinite number and variety of cords pulleys, toothed-wheels, nails, screws, levers, inclined-planes, as well as agencies of air, water, fire, light, &c., combined in endless modes to produce a desired effect Ingenuity has been long exercised on such combinations, chiefly for public amusement or mystification, without any object of utility.

Andrew Ure
Great Britain may certainly continue to uphold her envied supremacy, sustained by her coal, iron, capital, and skill, if, acting on the Baconian axiom, " Knowledge is Power," she shall diligently promote moral and professional culture among all ranks of her productive population.

Andrew Ure