Age of Invention

I’m a historian of innovation. I write mostly about the causes of Britain’s Industrial Revolution, focusing on the lives of the individual innovators who made it happen. I’m interested in everything from the exploits of sixteenth-century alchemists to the schemes of Victorian engineers. My research explores why they became innovators, and the institutions they created to promote innovation even further.

  1. ​Upstream, Downstream​
  1. Upstream, Downstream

    Image from antonhowes.substack.com on 2021-02-04 at 7.42.32 PM.png

    To truly increase innovation, I think we need policies focused on what goes on even further upstream, before much of the supply of new inventors is inevitably siphoned off into distractions, dead ends, and failure. Most policies inevitably have a marginal effect, but a slight expansion of the incoming swell of potential inventors can have a much greater impact than fiddling with the incentives of the few hundred who’ve already somewhat made it to the final trickle. Increase the strength of the flow upstream, and everything downstream flows the faster too.

    1. ​Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation​