Fleeing the Flowing Commons: Robert Thom, Water Reservoir Schemes, and the Shift to Steam Power in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain
In the 1820s and 1830s, British industry faced a choice between two energy sources to fuel its expansion: water and coal. A series of water reservoir schemes were proposed to scale up the power capacity of rivers in the central manufacturing districts, but the schemes with the largest potentials were never realized. Instead, the industry veered toward steam power, fatefully linking self-sustaining