TIME-SAVING TECHNICAL CHANGE - THE COTTON INDUSTRY IN THE ENGLISH INDUSTRIAL-REVOLUTION

In this paper, the course of technical progress in the well-known case of the cotton industry during the English Industrial Revolution is reinterpreted as being directed by time-saving technological change. In this interpretation, such heuristics generate outcomes that may variously save labor, working and fixed capital, and/or land. It is shown that in all the major subprocesses from preparation through to finishing, time-saving changes were especially prominent. It is thus argued that technological opportunities and constraints as defined by such heuristics were more significant than orthodox economic explanations for the evolution of technology at this time. (C) 1995 Academic Press, Inc.