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This paper offers a new perspective on the emergence of machinery in the cotton spinning trade during the third quarter of the eighteenth century. It does so by examining the interplay between economic, political, and national interests within the early Hanoverian state. Changes in trading relationships between textile producers across the three kingdoms of England/Wales, Ireland, and Scotland created escalating supply‐side problems, which, by the 1760s, would precipitate a quest for solutions based on new technologies.

Historians and economists have long been in need of index numbers to measure both the volume (real value) of activity that is undertaken to produce process or product innovations over time, and also a counterpart index that might capture the outcome of that activity (the volume of inventions) that come on stream year after year. For purposes of measurement the first index can in principle be equated (within tolerable limits of accuracy) with the real annual expenditures on research and development as recorded (at least for recent times) in governmental, corporate, company, and other accounts. Alas, for years before 1914 national or even industry-wide research and development expenditures are very rarely recorded in a form that might allow for the construction of an index number.

An analysis of innovations in the eighteenth-century British textile industry is the basis for an evaluation of aggregate studies of invention during the Industrial Revolution, derived from patent evidence alone. Disaggregation of the data challenges recent generalizations concerning the pace and pattern of technical change over the period. Discontinuities in the nature of invention, promoting an acceleration in total factor productivity growth, are traced to the 1790s. Prior to that date, industrial development conformed to a pattern of Smithian growth, as manufacturers diversified their output in response to an expanding domestic market for consumer goods.

In 12 Beiträgen wird die Entwicklung quasi-autonomer nichtstaatlicher Organisationen (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations/Quangos) in Großbritannien dargestellt und diskutiert: (1) Wilson, David: Quangos in the skeletal state; (2) Hunt, David: Worthwile bodies; (3) Hogwood, Brian: The "Growth" of Quangos: evidence and explanations; (4) Stewart, John: Appointed boards and local government; (5) Sorensen, Eric: London Docklands and urban development corporations; (6) Chumrow, John: Housing action trusts: a possible role model; (7) Graham, Alistair: The accountability of training and enterprise councils; (8) Johnson, Helen; Riley, Kathryn: The impact of Quangos and new government agencies on education; (9) Hunt, Philip: Accountability in the National Health Service; (10) Weir, Stuart: Quangos: questions of democratic accountability; (11) Stott, Tony: "Snouts in the trough": the politics of quangos; (12) Hirst, Paul: Quangos and democratic government. - Hervorgehoben wird die Entwicklung zur Ersetzung gewählter Regierungs- bzw. Selbtverwaltungsgremien durch ernannte Gremien, die zunehmend Verwaltungsaufgaben übernehmen, ohne einer demokratischen Rechenschaftspflicht zu unterliegen und somit Tendenzen zur Überzentralisierung verstärken. (AuD-Hng)