Each played its part in what became the industrial revolution: at Coalbrookdale in 1709, Abraham Darby smelted iron with coal; at Derby in 1721, the silk-thrower Thomas Lombe designed and constructed the world’s first recognisable factory; in Preston in 1732, Richard Arkwright was born; in Birmingham in 1741 or 1742, John Wyatt and Lewis Paul first applied the system of spinning cotton by rollers, which Arkwright would appropriate and improve.
