This was neither the first nor the last time a country would import knowledge and equipment from overseas in an effort to build out its industrial base. People have been doing this forever: George Ravenscroft would never have worked out how to make clear, crystal glass without help from the artisans he had smuggled back from Venice. In the late nineteenth century Scottish-born industrialist Andrew Carnegie would import the Bessemer convertor into the US, helping cement his dominant position in the sector.
