England, during the 1760s, was the birthplace of the western world’s Industrial Revolution, initiated by a group of men who made “manufacturing” the purview of the inventive. Called The Lunar Society of Birmingham because the group met during the full moon, these inventors were amateur scientists and innovators.

Jenny Uglow writes in The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003) that they discovered oxygen, revolutionized ceramic production, built canals, named minerals, and generally combined the disciplines of art, science, and commerce to identify or create things not previously even imagined.

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