50 Things That Made The Modern Economy With Tim Harford

Here Monde, in northwest Italy, is celebrated for its fine wine.

But when a young Englishman, John Lom, traveled there in the early 18th century,

he wasn't going to save a glass of borrola.

His purpose was industrial espionage.

Lom wished to figure out how the Piemontese spun strong yarn from silkworm silk.

Divalging such secrets was illegal, so Lom snuck into a workshop after dark,

sketching the spinning machines by candlelight.

In 1717, he took those sketches to Derby, in the heart of England.

Local legend has it that the Italians took a terrible revenge on Lom,

sending a woman to assassinate him.

Whatever the truth of that, he died suddenly at the age of 29,

just a few years after his Italian adventure.

While Lom may have copied Italian secrets, the way he and his older half-brother,

Thomas, used them, was completely original.

The Lom's were textile dealers, and seeing a shortage of the strong silk yarn called

organzine, they decided to go big.

In the centre of Derby, beside the fast-flowing river derwent,

the Lom brothers built a structure that was to be imitated around the world.

A long, slim, five-story building with plain brick walls cut by a grid of windows.

It housed three dozen large machines powered by a seven-meter high water wheel.

It was a dramatic change in scale, says historian Joshua Freeman.

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