B · Which trades
Field composition
Textiles, dyeing and leatherLargest field 1840–1852
Key point
The largest fields are water raising, drainage and hydraulics, metals and metalworking, mining and ore in 1617–1649, and textiles, dyeing and leather, carriages, railways, ships and navigation, steam and motive power in 1840–1852. The unmatched 'other' share ranges from 9% to 22% by period.
- Definition
- Share of granted inventions by field. The field is the first match of a pre-registered list of word rules applied to the title of the invention.
- Formula
- count in field and period ÷ count in period (including 'other')
- How to read it
- In 1617–1649 water raising and drainage, metals and mining take large shares; after 1820, textiles, transport and steam.
- Caveats
- Classification uses the words of the title, so an invention that spans two fields goes to the one earlier in the list. 'Other' is what no rule matched. The rules agree with an independent coder reading the text on about two entries in three (see the reliability card), so read the shares as a rough composition and do not weigh small changes in a single field. For Hulme 1561–1603 the same rules were applied to the subject line.
Table
Download CSV · m_b1_fields.csv
| Field | 1617–1649 | 1650–1699 | 1700–1749 | 1750–1779 | 1780–1799 | 1800–1819 | 1820–1839 | 1840–1852 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| printing, paper, books and prints | 4% | 7% | 4% | 6% | 6% | 7% | 6% | 5% |
| arms and ammunition | 5% | 7% | 3% | 3% | 3% | 4% | 2% | 1% |
| mining and ore | 12% | 10% | 5% | 3% | 1% | 1% | 1% | 1% |
| water raising, drainage and hydraulics | 14% | 8% | 9% | 6% | 6% | 4% | 3% | 2% |
| steam and motive power | 0% | 0% | 1% | 1% | 5% | 5% | 10% | 9% |
| carriages, railways, ships and navigation | 3% | 13% | 14% | 13% | 11% | 13% | 12% | 12% |
| textiles, dyeing and leather | 6% | 12% | 14% | 16% | 16% | 14% | 17% | 15% |
| glass, pottery, brick and tile | 4% | 6% | 4% | 3% | 3% | 2% | 2% | 3% |
| metals and metalworking | 13% | 10% | 10% | 11% | 10% | 8% | 7% | 7% |
| chemicals, salt, soap, oil and dyestuffs | 6% | 4% | 8% | 4% | 4% | 3% | 3% | 4% |
| mills and grinding | 2% | 3% | 2% | 2% | 2% | 1% | 0% | 1% |
| food, brewing and distilling | 2% | 2% | 5% | 2% | 4% | 5% | 4% | 3% |
| fuel, heating and lighting | 2% | 4% | 4% | 4% | 4% | 6% | 6% | 8% |
| clocks, instruments and music | 4% | 1% | 2% | 5% | 5% | 5% | 3% | 2% |
| agriculture | 5% | 0% | 1% | 0% | 1% | 2% | 1% | 2% |
| building and construction | 0% | 0% | 1% | 3% | 2% | 3% | 3% | 3% |
| medicine and the body | 2% | 1% | 4% | 7% | 2% | 2% | 1% | 1% |
| other / no match | 18% | 11% | 9% | 11% | 14% | 17% | 18% | 22% |
sampledReliability card
Rule-based classification: assigned by word rules; below, the precision measured on an independently coded sample
- Text recoding, field (stratified sample)
- 145/212 (68%, 95% CI 62–74%)
- Cohen's kappa
- 0.67
- Precision weighted by field shares
- 67%
- Agreement by field
- agriculture 10/11; arms 5/11; building 6/11; chemicals 10/11; food_drink 6/11; fuel_light 9/11; glass_ceramics 9/11; instruments 9/11; medicine 7/11; metals 10/11; mills 10/11; mining 7/11; other 5/25; printing_paper 8/11; steam_power 8/11; textiles 11/11; transport 6/11; water 9/11
Sources
- Bennet Woodcroft, Titles of Patents of Invention, Chronologically Arranged, from March 2, 1617 (14 James I.) to October 1, 1852 (16 Victoriae), London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1854, 2 parts (Nos. 1–14,359). Entries were split from the word coordinates of the Internet Archive OCR of the University of Illinois copy (
chronologicalin1617grea_0,chronologicalind1617grea); 115 pages on which that OCR lost entry numbers were read again from the page images with tesseract 5. (public domain, 1854; https://archive.org/details/chronologicalin1617grea_0) - E. Wyndham Hulme, 'The History of the Patent System under the Prerogative and at Common Law', Law Quarterly Review 12 (1896) 141–154, and '… A Sequel', LQR 16 (1900) 44–56: the list of industrial monopoly grants 1561–1603, Nos. I–LV (55 grants), and the summary table on p. 52, transcribed by hand and checked against the page images. (public domain, 1896, 1900; https://archive.org/details/sim_law-quarterly-review_1900-01_16_61)