what did britain do in order to keep industrial secrets from the us

Long before the United States began accusing other countries of stealing ideas, the U.Due south. government encouraged intellectual piracy to catch up with England'due south technological advances. According to historian Doron Ben-Atar, in his book, Trade Secrets, "the United States emerged equally the world'south industrial leader past illicitly appropriating mechanical and scientific innovations from Europe."

Among those sniffing out innovations beyond the Atlantic was Harvard graduate and Boston merchant, Francis Cabot Lowell. Every bit the War of 1812 raged on, Lowell ready sheet from Great Great britain in possession of the enemy's almost precious commercial secret. He carried with him pirated plans for Edmund Cartwright's ability loom, which had fabricated Peachy Britain the earth'due south leading industrial power.

Halfway across the Atlantic, a British frigate intercepted Lowell's ship. Although the British double-searched his luggage and detained him for days, Lowell knew they would never find whatever evidence of espionage for he had hidden the plans in the 1 place they would never find them—inside his photographic heed. Unable to notice any sign of spy craft, the British allowed Lowell to return to Boston, where he used Cartwright'southward pattern to help propel the Industrial Revolution in the United States.

Dr. Edmund Cartwright shown next to the Ability Loom, which was inspired past machinery he saw in England.

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Founding Fathers Encouraged Intellectual Piracy

Lowell was hardly the commencement American to pilfer British intellectual property. The Founding Fathers not but tolerated intellectual piracy, they actively encouraged information technology. Many agreed with Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, who believed that the development of a strong manufacturing base was vital to the survival of the largely agrestal state. Months before taking the oath of part every bit the first president in 1789, George Washington wrote to Thomas Jefferson that "the introduction of the belatedly improved machines to abridge labor, must be of almost infinite consequence to America."

The fledgling land, nonetheless, lacked a domestic material manufacturing industry and lagged far behind Great Uk. The quickest fashion to close the technological gap betwixt the U.s.a. and its former motherland was not to develop designs from scratch—but to steal them.

In his 1791 "Report on Manufactures," Hamilton advocated rewarding those bringing "improvements and secrets of extraordinary value" into the country. Among those who took great involvement in Hamilton'south treatise was Thomas Attwood Digges, ane of several American industrial spies who prowled the British Isles in the late 18th and early on 19th centuries in search of not but cut-border technologies only skilled workers who could operate and maintain those machines.

In social club to protect its economic supremacy, the British government banned the export of fabric mechanism and the emigration of cotton, mohair and linen workers who operated them. A 1796 pamphlet printed in London warned of "agents hovering like birds of casualty on the banks of the Thames, eager in their search for such artisans, mechanics, husbandmen and laborers, as are inclinable to direct their class to America."

Digges, a friend of Washington who grew up across the Potomac River from the president'south Mount Vernon manor, was one such intellectual vulture. Foreigners recruiting British fabric workers to get out the country faced £500 fines and a year in prison, and Digges found himself jailed repeatedly.

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The American spy printed one,000 copies of Hamilton's report and distributed them throughout the manufacturing centers of Republic of ireland and England to entice textile workers to the United States. His about successful recruit was Englishman William Pearce, a mechanic whom Digges idea a "second Archimedes."

Dispatched to the United States with letters of introduction to both Washington and Jefferson, Pearce initially worked on manufacturing projects for Hamilton. He later established a cotton manufacturing plant in Philadelphia that was personally inspected past Jefferson and George and Martha Washington. The beginning president praised Digges for "his activity and zeal (with considerable gamble) in sending artisans and machines of public utility to this country."

The first h2o-powered textile mill established past English language-built-in Samuel Slater in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

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Pirated Technology Was Patented

Nether the Patent Act of 1793, the United States granted dubious patents to Americans who had pirated technology from other countries at the same fourth dimension that information technology barred strange inventors from receiving patents. "America thus became, past national policy and legislative act, the earth's premier legal sanctuary for industrial pirates," writes Pat Choate in his book Hot Belongings: The Stealing of Ideas in an Age of Globalization. "Any American could bring a foreign innovation to the United States and commercialize the idea, all with total legal immunity."

That's what Samuel Slater did. The English-born cotton manufacturing plant supervisor posed equally a farmhand and sailed for the The states in 1789. Having memorized the details of Richard Arkwright's patented spinning frames that he oversaw, Slater established the young country's first water-powered cloth mill in Rhode Isle and became a rich man. While President Andrew Jackson dubbed him "Father of American Manufactures," the English language had a quite different nickname for him—"Slater the Traitor."

More than two decades after Slater'southward emigration, the textile industry in the United States still lagged behind the British who had the cutting-edge technology of the Cartwright power loom, the h2o-driven machine that weaved thread into finished cloth. Living in Edinburgh, Scotland, under doctor'southward orders to recuperate from nervous burnout, Lowell grew adamant to bring British technology back to the United States.

Lowell's upper-crust pedigree had fabricated him an unlikely spy, but that was precisely how he gained access. Bearing letters of reference, the sickly American did not appear to be a threat to the material manufacturing plant owners and England and Scotland who gave him the unusual privilege of touring their factories, which were concealed backside fortress-like walls topped with spikes and broken glass. Lowell took no notes and asked few questions, but all the while he studied the power loom design and committed it to retention.

Back in Boston, Lowell did more than replicate the pirated British technology. With the help of Paul Moody, he improved upon Cartwright's power loom in 1814 by constructing in Waltham, Massachusetts, the first integrated textile manufacturing manufactory, which converted cotton into finished cloth under ane roof.

The spinning water wheels of American textile mills—and the stolen secrets upon which they were congenital—propelled the U.s. forward and speedily transformed it into i of the world's leading industrial powers.

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Source: https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-europe

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