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In conjunction with the 2009 Bi Centenary exhibitions
Matthew Boulton was an eighteenth-century designer, inventor and
industrialist, a consummate businessman and co-founder of the
influential Lunar Society. Now, on the bicentenary of his death, this
book surveys his life and extraordinarily varied achievements. The book
explains how Boulton, a Birmingham 'toy' maker producing buttons,
buckles and silverware, went into business with James Watt and exported
Boulton & Watt steam engines all over the world. Meanwhile his
magnificent ormolu ornaments decorated aristocratic drawing rooms, and
his determination to discourage counterfeiters led to a contract to
manufacture British coinage and coins of other countries at his mint.
Boulton was leader of the campaign to establish the Birmingham Assay
Office (still the busiest in the country), and also at the heart of the
Lunar Society, a group of prominent industrialists, natural
philosophers, and intellectuals interested in scientific and social
change. A friend of Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Erasmus Darwin,
Josiah Wedgwood and many others, Boulton was a fascinating man,
Britain's leading Enlightenment entrepreneur.- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: Yale University Press (28 April 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0300143583
- ISBN-13: 978-0300143584
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Product Dimensions:
29.8 x 25.6 x 2.6 cm
- Condition: New
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