Latest book: Mechanical Wonders

I first saw David Hulse’s collection of working model stationary steam engines in 2015. David had built these machines over many years in a specially equipped workshop in his home. Watching the engines work was an amazing sensory experience and listening to him describe how they were made revealed his talent as a communicator in explaining complex technical processes to others.

David had been a senior engineer working for a leading ceramics manufacturer and his precise mechanical skills provided the professional foundation which enabled him to build his creations, but there is more. He has a deep-rooted interest in the history of technology and the contributions that practical men, before the advent of the profession of mechanical engineer, made to the development of eighteenth-century steam technology. He conducted archival research, exploring diagrams, drawings and letters from the time, examined original engines in museums and consulting leading experts in the field. He brought his imagination as a solver of problems to understand how technical challenges were overcome at the time, which he then applied to the practice of crafting his handiwork.

 

The results are seven replica examples of eighteenth and early nineteenth-century atmospheric and steam engines, originally created by Thomas Newcomen and James Watt;-two famous figures of the Industrial Revolution;-James Pickard, Matthew Wasborough, Francis Thompson, Adam Heslop and Richard Trevithick;-less well-known, but still very important inventors. Powered by electricity rather than steam, they are accurate in every detail down to individual metal plates, rivets and bricks. Collectively, the original engines were central for the development of modern mining and manufacturing and mark the beginning of a world heavily dependent on technology.

David’s book charts the work of these men and the machines they fashioned, but it is much more than this: it is illustrated by photographs of his models and inspired by insights he has gained from making the engines. These enable the reader to appreciate how the original machines were constructed and operated in practice, but the publication is more than a conventional history of steam engines of a tribute to the practical minded inventors and mechanical engineers of the eighteenth- century. The book is a record of David’s enterprise and expertise, interwoven with historical understanding. It is an autobiography of his journey to understand and replicate a remarkable period in the history of technology.

Dr Malcolm Dick, Director, Centre for West Midlands History, University of Birmingham.