Adam Smith and the Pin Factory
A few observations:<p>There&#x27;s impressively <i>little</i> biographic information about Smith, and certainly very little by way of records from himself (letters, journals), other than his books, as he ordered <i>and witnessed</i> the destruction of his personal papers shortly before his death.  Much discussion about Smith&#x27;s life is conjecture or assembled from remaining fragments, either recollections of others, or his (very rare) letters.  Smith was a poor correspondant, and left few of the latter, either.<p>The one near-contemporaneous biography of which I&#x27;m aware and familiar is that of Dugald Stewart, published in 1793:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;assets.press.princeton.edu&#x2F;chapters&#x2F;s10573.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;assets.press.princeton.edu&#x2F;chapters&#x2F;s10573.pdf</a><p>Some notes on that by Gavin Kennedy, a modern Smith scholar, who died this past April:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;adamsmithslostlegacy.blogspot.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;02&#x2F;dugald-stewart-on-adam-smiths-lifes-work.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;adamsmithslostlegacy.blogspot.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;02&#x2F;dugald-ste...</a><p>On the whole matter of the pin factory:  as enduring and (to some) endearing as the anecdote is, what&#x27;s struck me is that few discussions of the Industrial Revolution attribute it to the simple division of labour.  Rather, it&#x27;s the consequence of <i>mechanisation</i> of production, first through water power, and following about 1800, steam.  You&#x27;d think Smith might have been aware of this, as Newcomen&#x27;s &quot;atmospheric engine&quot; was 65 years old at the publication of <i>Wealth of Nations</i>, and James Watt had been working on his own enhancements since 1763, though true, he didn&#x27;t release a commercial product until 1775, the year before <i>Wealth</i> was published.<p>But Watt, like Smith, was a Scottsman.  Surely the two would have know of each other?  After all, both were in Edinburough.<p>Well, as it turns out, they did.  Watt had ... some degree of difficulty ... in establishing himself professionally in Edinburough (the degree of interference from the blacksmiths&#x27; guild, the Hammermen, is displuted), and gained stability through a position at the University of Edinburough, in part through the intercession of Smith himself, in 1757, and the two were friends.  Watt worked on a Newcomen engine at the University, that being the basis of his own improved designs, beginning in 1763.<p>The bulk of the commercial significance of steam didn&#x27;t occur until <i>after</i> the publication of *Wealth of Nations, with about 500 engines existing in 1800, at the expiry of Watt&#x27;s (previously extended) patent, and after Smith&#x27;s own death.  But if we&#x27;re going to credit Smith with so much insight over the field of economics, it&#x27;s peculiar to let this specific, and gargantuan, lapse simply slide.