Victorian Technology
By Paul Atterbury
Victorian society was transformed by engineering ingenuity and entrepreneurial prowess, with the
most striking advances made in the field of communication. What is the legacy of these
extraordinary advances?
A powerful trading nation
During the reign of Queen Victoria Britain emerged as the most powerful trading nation in the
world, provoking a social and economic revolution whose effects are still being felt today. Since
the latter part of the eighteenth century the process of industrialisation had built a firm foundation
for nineteenth century growth and expansion. At the heart of this was the successful development
and application of steam technology. Before 1800 brilliant engineers and entrepreneurs such as
James Watt and Matthew Boulton had made steam power a practical reality that had radically
improved Britain's core industries, namely the mining of coal, minerals and other raw materials
and the production of iron, textiles and manufactured goods. With its advanced industrial
technologies Britain was able to attack a huge and rapidly expanding international market.
Between 1809 and 1839 exports grew from ￡25.4 to ￡76 million. Ten years later the figure was
￡124.5 million, with the major export markets being Europe, India and Asia and, increasingly,
the United States. At the start of Queen Victoria's reign, Britain's standing as a global industrial
and trading power was already unrivalled. The complex structures of international trade developed
by the Victorians and the maintenance of the process of wealth generation derived from them were
dependent upon efficient means of communication. In many ways, the Victorians owe their unique
place in history to their imaginative and successful exploitation of three new communication
technologies, the steamship, the railway and the electric telegraph.
'During the reign of Queen Victoria Britain emerged as the most powerful trading nation in the
world...'
The steamship has a long, pre-Victorian ancestry, dating back at least to 1783 when the Marquis
de Jouffray d'Abbans steamed his little boat, the Pyroscaphe, across the Seine. The first
steam-assisted crossing of the Atlantic took place in 1819 when the Savannah sailed from Georgia
to Liverpool in 633 hours. By 1833 the Atlantic crossing had been reduced to 22 days and steam
ships had begun to operate on the major Imperial and trade routes to India, South Africa and
Australia. The 1830s were also marked by the founding of three major shipping lines, the British
and American Steam Navigation Company, the Great Western Steamship Company and the
Peninsular Steam Navigation Company. The first two concentrated their efforts on the Atlantic and
their rivalry launched the period of frenetic competition on that route that was to continue
throughout the Victorian period and well into the twentieth century.
In April 1838 the Great Western sailed from Bristol to New York in 14 days and 12 hours,
establishing the modern steamship era and the famous Blue Riband contest for the fastest
transatlantic passage by passenger ships. Competition was intensified by the setting up by Samuel
Cunard of a new shipping line. In July 1840 his first ship, the Britannia, crossed the Atlantic in 11
days and 4 hours. By 1901 the German liner the Deutschland could cross the Atlantic in under 5
days.
Great pioneers
The designer of the Great Western was the brilliant young engineer of the Great Western Railway,
Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who had persuaded his directors that a transatlantic shipping line was
the natural way to expand the services offered by their railway. Brunel's response to the challenge
posed by his rivals was to design a bigger and better ship. In July 1839, the keel was laid in Bristol
for a new 3270 ton iron super ship. Designed for speed and comfort, this was to be the most
revolutionary steamship of the early Victorian period. Equipped with cabins and state rooms for
360 passengers and the largest and most lavish dining room afloat, and the first large ship to be
screw-driven, the Great Britain set the standard for large liners for many decades to come. By
1853 the Great Britain, refitted to accommodate up to 630 passengers, was operating an efficient
London to Australia service and continued to do so for nearly twenty years.
The success of the Great Britain encouraged Brunel and his backers to create one more ship. In
1854 work started at Millwallon the Thames in east London on the building of the Great Eastern.
Designed to carry 4000 passengers and enough coal to sail to Australia without refuelling en route,
the ship was 693 feet long, 120 feet wide and weighed over 18,900 tons. Nothing on this scale had
ever been considered before, and when she was finally broken up in 1888, the Great Eastern was
still the largest ship in the world. The records of scale set by the Great Eastern were only finally
broken by the super liners of the Edwardian era, the Lusitania of 1907, the Titanic of 1912 and the
Imperator of 1913. On the Great Eastern's maiden voyage in June 1860 the ship carried only 38
paying passengers.
'Scale and technical virtuosity were not enough and the smaller, simpler and faster ships of Samuel
Cunard captured the traffic.'
This became a pattern and the ship never sailed with all berths filled. Scale and technical
virtuosity were not enough and the smaller, simpler and faster ships of Samuel Cunard captured
the traffic. Increasingly a white elephant, the Great Eastern came out of passenger service in 1863
and was chartered by the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company to lay telegraph
cables across the Atlantic and from India to Aden, a task for which her huge size and powerful
engines made her eminently suitable.
From an early date the British government realised that the successful operation and maintenance
of an expanding trade empire depended upon fast, regular and reliable steamship services,
supported by coaling and supply stations scattered all over the world. The primary function of the
Royal Navy in Victorian Britain was the protection of these trade routes and their supply bases. As
a result, the government sponsored the development and maintenance of the routes and,
increasingly, the cost of building the ships. In 1840 the Peninsular Company became the
Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, with government contracts to operate
services to Egypt, South Africa, India, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.
In the process, as the Cunard name was becoming synonymous with the Atlantic so P&O
developed its long term association with routes east of Suez.
Booming railways
Equally important were the links established between shipping lines and ship yards. During the
Victorian period British shipyards on the Clyde, the Tyne, the Mersey, the Thames, at Barrow and
Belfast came to dominate the world, having pioneered the use of iron and steel in ship-building,
and developed marine technology to a high level. In 1900, for example, 739,000 tons of shipping
was built and registered in Britain. British yards built ships for owners all over the world and were
still in a dominant position at the end of the century, despite increasing competition offered by
ship builders in Germany. Cunard had close links with the Glasgow yard of Robert Napier, while
the Belfast firm of Harland & Wolff backed a new Atlantic challenger, the White Star Line,
launched in 1871 and went on to have interests in other shipping companies, including the Union
Castle Line.
Like the steamship, the railway predates the Victorian era. The start of the modern railway age is
usually marked by the opening in 1825 of the Stockton & Darlington line. Other, mostly local,
lines followed, the most important of which was the Liverpool and Manchester of 1830, famous
for Robert Stephenson's Rocket locomotive. With its multitube boiler, blast pipe exhaust, pistons
connected directly to the driving wheels and its ability to haul its train at over 30 miles per hour,
this machine set the standard for locomotive design. The first long distance lines were opened in
the first years of Queen Victoria's reign, the London and Birmingham in 1838, part of Brunel's
London to Bristol route the same year and the London and Southampton in 1840. A railway boom
and mania followed during the 1840s, with promoters and speculators planning lines all over
Britain.
'Like the steamship, the railway predates the Victorian era.'
By 1845 2441 miles of railway were open and 30 million passengers were being carried. The
railways, offering as they did new opportunities for travel and commerce, and breaking down
social barriers in the process, were immediately popular, a popularity encouraged by acts of
parliament that ensured that trains conformed to standards of speed and comfort and offered rates
that were affordable by all. The spread of the railways also brought about, through time-tabling, a
regularisation of time throughout Britain. Excursions and day trips, particularly to the seaside,
became a familiar part of British social life. In 1851 many of the six million visitors to the Great
Exhibition travelled by train to London in organised excursions. Queen Victoria made her first
train journey on 13 June 1842 and then became a regular user of the rail network, for speed and
convenience and because it gave her ample opportunity to show herself and her family to her
subjects.
Expansion of the rail network was rapid and continuous. Between 1861 and 1888 the mileage
grew by 81 percent and the traffic carried by 180 percent. By 1900, 18,680 miles were in use and
over 1100 million passengers were being carried, along with huge quantities of freight. From 1852
the carriage of freight provided the railway companies with the bulk of their income. Safety
standards, at first almost non-existent, gradually improved with advances in signalling and vehicle
technology. By the end of the century trains ran regularly, and with complete safety, at speeds in
excess of 70 miles per hour. Comfort also improved. The first lavatories appeared in family
saloons in the 1860s, the first proper sleeping cars were introduced in 1873 and dining cars came
into use from 1879.
Communication revolution
The building of the railway network was the major achievement of the Victorian period, changing
for ever both social patterns and the landscape of Britain. The great engineers, Stephenson, Brunel,
Locke, Vignoles and many others built their lines across hills and valleys, across mountains and
marshland and over great rivers with determination and style, and often regardless of cost. Their
legacy are the great embankments, viaducts, tunnels and bridges that cover the face of Britain, in
many cases still visible long after the trains they served have disappeared. Their stations,
wondrous constructions in iron and glass and great cathedrals to modernity, brought a new
building type into British culture.
As the railway was, in essence, a British creation, it was readily exported to many parts of the
world, as a concept, and in component form. British engineers, British construction teams and
British capital built railways throughout the Empire, in the Americas and in many parts of Europe.
The famous railway contractor Thomas Brassey built railways in France, Italy, Belgium, Spain,
Russia, India, Argentina and Australia. Imperial railway building projects were often inspired by
strategic as well as industrial and commercial motives, but such projects, notably in India and
Africa, opened up huge and long lasting markets to British manufacturers.British-made
locomotives, rolling stock and railway equipment were exported around the world throughout the
Victorian period.
'The building of the railway network was the major achievement of the Victorian period, changing
for ever both social patterns and the landscape of Britain.'
The spread of the railway in Victorian Britain was closely linked to the development of the electric
telegraph. The idea of communicating via electricity dates back to the eighteenth century but it
was the understanding of electromagnetism from the 1820s that gave the idea a practical reality. In
1837 Cooke and Wheatstone developed the electric telegraph which used an electric current to
move magnetic needles and thus transmit messages in code. The first operational telegraph system
linked Euston station and Camden town, and from there it spread all over the railway network,
used both to carry messages and to control signalling. The technology of the telegraph rapidly
expanded, making possible mass communication on both national and global scales. With
instruments in every post office, the telegraph, and its visible offspring, the telegram, personal
communication on a scale hitherto inconceivable became commonplace. A telegraph cable was
laid across the Channel in 1851, followed by others across the Irish and North Seas.
In 1866 Brunel's huge ship, the Great Eastern, laid a durable telegraph cable across the Atlantic.
The global network spread rapidly, with many countries establishing their own systems. Colonial,
military and commercial implications were quickly appreciated. By 1878 Britain had constructed
two overland and one maritime telegraph links to India, part of a network that by the end of the
century had reached almost every corner of the world. Related to the telegraph, but far more
practical on a personal level, was the telephone, developed by the Scotsman Alexander Graham
Bell in 1876. By 1887 there were 26,000 telephones in use in Britain (and 150,000 in the United
States) and multiple switchboards had been installed in most major towns and cities.
With the development by Marconi of practical radio transmissions at the very end of the
nineteenth century, the foundations for the global communications systems of the twenty first
century were in place in Victorian Britain.
In Britain, the attitudes and achievements of the Victorians are still part of many aspects of
modern life today. These legacies are probably most tangible in the fields of communication. The
Victorians not only built a British railway network which was more than twice as large as today's
network but often operated with greater effiency. Urban transport systems such as buses and
underground railways were also created by the Victorians. With those systems came the habit of
commuting, one of the most durable and least appealing of nineteenth century legacies. The post
service, the electric telegraph which was the forerunner of today's internet and the phone paved
the way for the making of a world which relies heavily on complex structures of domestic and
worldwide communications.
Find out more
Books
Victorian Things by Asa Briggs (London, 1988)
Companion to Britain in the Nineteenth Century, 1815-1914 by Chris Cook (Longman, 1999)
Brunel: The Great Engineer by Tim Bryan (Ian Allan, 2000)
The Railways of Britain by O S Nock (London, 1947)
The Railway Heritage of Britain by Gordon Biddle & O S Nock (Studio Editions 1990)
The Oxford Companion to British Railway History by Jack Simmons & Gordon Biddle (Oxford,
1997)
The Railway Empire by Anthony Burton (Murray, 1994)
About the author
Since 1981, Paul Atterbury has been a freelance writer, lecturer, broadcaster and exhibition curator.
He has written or edited over thirty books, mostly on ceramics, antiques and the decorative arts as
well as travel. For the last eleven years Paul has been a member of the Antiques Roadshow team
of experts. He was the curator of a major exhibition about the Victorians at the Victoria & Albert
Museum in London.