… on which more later, but meanwhile you can also read the original blogpost: How to get ahead in business the Boulton and Watt way.

Now there’s a new version, using cards, stickers and an A3 sheet for you to play with the story. It’s backed up with a new set of web pages at 1794story.wordpress.com.

It’s an unashamedly personal, partial and unfinished history, an experiment in stripping the book down to its barest essentials then adding some of the flexibility and remixability of the web. I’ve written more of the “why” of the project in the about page.

Also, I’m looking for a few people to play with the story. “Beta test” would be an overstatement, but I am interested in honest feedback. There is no right way to read this story, only what you do with it. Let me know if you’re interested.

About this time of year, this blog gets a peak in search hits for Thomas A Watson of “Mr Watson, come here. I want you” fame.

Somewhere out there, I imagine, is a teacher who sets the same class assignment every year, and whose students flock obediently to Google in search of information and images. I applaud that teacher. Alexander Graham Bell’s collaborator is not as well known as he should be. While Bell had the big ideas, it was Watson’s talents as an electrical engineer that saw them successfully realised. He was one of the original hardware hackers.

So every year I feel a twinge of guilt that I’m somehow letting down my audience, given the flippancy with which I invoked Watson’s name in a post that contains little meaningful information about the man himself.

To make amends, I have tracked down a copy of Ted Clarke’s wonderfully titled biography “Thomas A. Watson: Does That Name Ring A Bell?” which paints a picture of a true Renaissance man.

Here are 10 cool things about Thomas A. Watson. Nine of them are actual true facts from Mr Clarke’s book. The other one is a barefaced lie made up by me to add a little piquancy for the Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V squad. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. You can’t believe everything you read on the internet.

1. Tom Watson came from beginnings so humble that as a young man he was accustomed to eating only with a knife. The more educated Alexander Graham Bell introduced him to the delights of the three-pronged fork
2. Before making the first telephone, Bell commissioned Watson to make an experimental “autograph telegraph” which was intended to transmit facsimile pictures and writing by wire
3. Bell’s summons to Watson is famous as the first understandable sentence ever transmitted by telephone. It is less well-known that Bell had just spilled acid on his clothes when he issued that command
4. Watson was offered a 10% share in all future profits from Bell’s patents, but took two whole weeks before he agreed to give up his steady $3-a-day job to join the partnership full-time
5. Early demonstrations of the telephone were given in theatres where Watson would sing “Yankee Doodle” and “Do Not Trust Him, Gentle Lady” over the equipment to rapturous applause
6. While Bell invented the telephone, Watson invented the bell to signal incoming calls, making him the father of the ringtone. This took some years and was preceded by other devices known as “Watson’s Buzzer” and ”Watson’s Thumper,” a kind of metal hammer
7. Thomas Edison once offered to decide a patent dispute by playing Watson at a game of Four-Ball Billiards. However a judge ruled in Bell and Watson’s favour before the match could take place
8. Watson invested his telephone fortune in building up one of America’s biggest shipyards, which went on to supply much of the USA’s First World War fleet
9. Aged 56, he took up acting and travelled Europe performing Shakespeare with a touring theatre company
10. Watson was a keen amateur geologist and discovered a fossilised Cambrian gastropod, which was named “Watsonella” in his honour.

Sincerely, I think the World needs more Thomas A Watsons.

It’s a pleasure to see – at risk of sounding like a Key Stage One Literacy Coordinator – that reading is hot right now.

• Amazon is starting to ship the Kindle DX worldwide
• Apple is apparently about to launch some kind of new device
• eReaders are predicted to be the hottest category at CES this week

Into this maelstrom come the Mag+ concepts from BERG for Bonnier. If you haven’t seen the video you should watch it now. Beyond the thoughtful work on the interaction within the user interface, I like the thinking about ”how the device might occupy the world.”

And separately, Christian Lindholm has some interesting ideas about linearity as a low-involvement user experience, perfectly suited to mobile.

Everyone’s talking about how it feels to be the reader – how he or she will be empowered to enjoy the best aspects of printed and digital media rolled into one wafer-thin device. It’s all very user-centred.

But I think to succeed eReaders must not only meet the needs of the direct user, but also of those around them, the friends and family who may not welcome their loved one’s absorption in this exciting new media. They are the “next largest context” within which the new device must win acceptance.

BERG’s video hints at this with that “how the device might occupy the world” line. Rather than zooming in on the lovely concept UI, I wanted the camera to pan out, or swing round to observe fellow travellers on a crowded train, or a significant other snuggled up on the sofa. I’m not so interested in their initial reactions – the inevitable lookit-new-shiny glances – but more in how reader devices settle into the ebb and flow of everyday sociability.

I mean, as I type this…

My wife is sitting across the room, reading a book.

“What are you reading?” I ask.

She tells me. I glance at the cover for instant visual reinforcement of what my ears just heard, because books are open on the outsides as well as the insides.

“Is it a good book?” I ask.

She answers. We briefly discuss the content.

She goes on reading. There is a stillness. Even the page turns are almost imperceptible.

I watch her face for a faint smile.

Now rerun the scene with a digital device.

The first question is no longer “what are you reading?” It’s “what are you doing?” – a question that somehow already carries a hint of reproach.

Whatever the answer, the hard, blank underside of the device affords no confirmation.

Then, momentarily floored by the multiple possibilities of multimedia, there’s a pause while we establish that a book is being read, and mentally summon the terms in which we discuss books.

And here comes the toughest part, to engender stillness. Where once there was just the flicker of an eye, now there is the jabbing of a finger to exactly where on the page the reader is interacting.

The device may be rejected because it is closed to casual inspection. The lack of a cover to indicate the content makes it an occult thing, excluding observers as printed texts exclude the illiterate.

Yet at the same time, the device may be too distractingly revealing – of exactly where the reader is pointing her attention. An unwelcome disruption of the stillness of being with someone who is reading.

These are the subtleties that make this a more wicked problem than it may first appear to technologists or to publishers. I trust they will be solved, but only by considering all the people who are touched by books, not just the ones who happen to be reading them.

Be it known that at some point in the near future I plan to bloviate on the concept of the prospectus and its coming revival in new and unexpected transmedia formats. Consider this a prospectus. I’m so meta.

Two of my 1794 heroes were the steam pioneer James Watt and Holbeck engineer Matthew Murray. Both made engines for the textile mills of northern England – in effect the processing power to transform raw wool, flax and cotton into finished cloth. Later, their inventions went mobile to haul the first railway trains.

But the villain of this piece is Watt’s son, also called James, who in 1794 joined his father’s partnership with Matthew Boulton. Within a few years the upstart Leeds foundry of Fenton, Murray and Wood proved a serious competitor to Boulton & Watt’s more famous Soho works in Birmingham.

The stories of Watt’s feud with Murray are the stuff of Leeds legend, but to understand just how blatant it was you have to revisit the original sources, the letters and newspaper advertisements of the protagonists themselves.

Here, in his own words and those of his contemporaries, we can piece together the business wisdom of James Watt Junior.

1. Reach out to your competitors – In 1799, Watt’s employees Abraham Storey and William Murdock visited Leeds and called on Fenton, Murray and Wood, whose purpose-built Round Foundry was under construction. Murray recounts in the Leeds Mercury of 20 July 1803:

Mr. Storey, Manager of their Foundry, and Mr. Murdock, Superintendent of the Workmen at Soho, some time back visited our Works at Leeds, and from their assuring us of Messrs. Boulton, Watt & Co.’s friendly disposition were admitted into every part of the Manufactory by Mr. Wood and myself ; they were permitted to take Patterns and Specimens of our Workmanship, and we know that upon their return to Soho many of our Improvements were immediately adopted, and the engines made after that by them were in part constructed on our Plans.

Boulton confirmed this in a letter to Watt Junior: “”Murdock & Abraham are now returned from their excursion highly delighted and full of panegyricks upon Murray’s excellent work.”

2. Be generous with your hospitality – Boulton goes on: “They were admitted into every part of Murray’s maufactory & spent two evenings with him and by virtue of a plentiful dose of ale succeeded in extracting from him the arcana and myseteries of his superior performances.”

The return visit, according to Murray, was not so cordial:

Mr. Murdock, upon taking his leave of us, expressed a wish that as they and we were certainly the best Engine Makers in the Kingdom, we should always be upon good terms, and that if ever I should go to Soho, they would be very glad to show me all their Works.

I did go to Soho, and was refused admittance into their Manufactory of Steam Engines.

3. Be a flexible employer – There seems to have been a flow of workers between the two rival businesses, and when one of Boulton & Watt’s finest moved from Birmingham to Leeds, Watt Jnr travelled north to lure him back into the fold with an offer of increased pay. Yet having re-engaged the defector he was in no hurry to have him back at Soho:

Halligan has signed the agreement… If I mistake not he has it in his power to benefit us most materially, as he has been extremely attentive to all that is going on in the Foundry here and has picked up much valuable information. He is to remain with Murray as long as we may direct and to make application to try his hand at the green sand [the casting method at which Murray works clearly outdid Watt's].

4. Steal with pride – Watt had a further task for Halligan: to obtain the private correspondence of another defector, named Hughes:

He has promised to endeavour to get at old Hughes’s letters upon Wednesday night when the youth goes to the play and it is supposed may leave his letters in his working clothes. I confess that this is not very probable from the caution he observes and if it does not succeed, must have them examined whilst he is drunk or sleeping to ascertain whether they are worth taking.

A later letter reveals that Watt did get sight of the correspondence, but found nothing in it of use.

5. Expand into adjacent industries – as in those industries that happen to be adjacent to your competitor’s premises. Watt to Boulton on 12 June 1802:

I have been surveying the environs of this rival Establishment & making enquiries respecting the property & tenure of the neighbouring lands, with a view to seeing whether we could purchase anything under their very nose that might materially annoy them & eventually benefit ourselves. I find there are about 2 acres of Land next to Murrays works, which may be purchased, but the price probably will be £5 to 600 per acre. I shall learn the exact terms. There is a Malthouse which projects into their premises, which they have in vain endeavoured to purchase at a moderate rate. It is in the possession of a Widow, who is aware that it would be of some advantage to them & therefore asks a high price. This would enable us to overlook their whole Yard & holding it we might dictate our own terms.

Boulton & Watt eventually bought a 1.5 acre plot next to Murray’s works in order to prevent them expanding, though the widow at the malthouse asked too high a price.

6. If you can’t innovate, litigate – Murray had patented a number of improvements to steam engines, but Boulton & Watt challenged these, claiming that some were not original. It seems that Murray made the mistake of packing too many innovations into a single patent, so that when one element was questioned the whole patent would be lost. Murray declined to defend the Boulton & Watt challenge, saying he “did not think proper to defend it with such rich and powerful Opponents”.

Instead Murray kept his focus on his customers: “But the World I believe cares very little about Messrs. Boulton and Watt stealing my Inventions, or my stealing theirs; what people want of us are good engines…” He offered a 100 guinea wager that he could build a better engine than Boulton & Watt, to be judged by a jury of 12 other engine makers. The challenge was not taken up.

In the long run both businesses prospered.

Murray went on to provide the engine for the World’s first commercially successful steam railway, at Middleton Colliery, near Leeds. He died in 1826, his firm outliving him until it went out of business in 1843.

Boulton and Watt lasted 120 years, making steam engines until 1895. Curiously James Watt Senior, not Murray, is commemorated by a statue in Leeds’ City Square.

Want to know more? The letters and advertisement are published in full in “Matthew Murray: Pioneer Engineer,” available on archive.org or in book form from Tee Publishing.

It must always be a tough challenge to get the balance right, all the more so for our capital’s inaugural Ignite. I reckon the programme was spot on: the right mix of the challenging ideas and characteristic irreverence. None of TED’s West Coast cultishness here, just short talks fuelled by beer and chips.

If you have a few five minuteses to spare, you could do worse than watch these, my favourites…

• Alby Reid on Operation Paul Bunyan
• Jennie Albone on Things That Might Not Work Out
• Alan Smith on Design + Business
• Craig Smith on The Upsides and Downsides of Standards
• Ashley Benigno on Error(e) 404: Italy as a Country Not Found
• Nicky Smyth on Analogue World Design Patterns
• Matthew Baker on Diarrhea and Dodgy Doners
• Melissa McVeigh on Why Photography Defines Our World
• Ben Hammersley on The Renaissance Masters and their Mistresses

… and finally my own meandering around 1794 – So Much To Answer For, of which more here and here.

Thanks to Amy, Dan, Andy, Richard and all the sponsors for making it happen.

In parallel with preparing my talk, I used the slides as the starting point for some printed material. My experimental recipe is as follows:

First, catch your story. The idea of 1794 as a focal point struck me while reading, for different reasons, about Joseph Priestley, Camille Desmoulins, John Thelwall and Matthew Murray. Desmoulins led me to the war in France, and Jean-Marie-Joseph Coutelle and Claude Chappe. Antoine Lavoisier formed a further link between Priestley and Coutelle. Soon I had a map spelling out the connections.

Excite the attentions of the ingenious.^TM I’d been wondering how to break the all-male line-up of heroes when I saw this tweet:

Turns out Roberta Wedge has been engaging on Twitter on behalf of the mother of feminism for several months now. Thanks to her intervention, Mary Wollstonecraft was in.

Tell the story in 20 slides. The Ignite format demands concentration on the essence and pacing of a story. Since the slides advance automatically every 15 seconds, each slide needs to stand for no more than two or three connected points. To their credit, none of my fellow Ignite London speakers lost it under the time pressure. I’m not sure if it would be worse to stand gaping waiting for the next slide, or to watch powerless as a presentation runs away with itself.

Talk links, not nodes. One strategy I found to deal with the rigid timing was to make slides that represent the links in the story, not the nodes. For example, if I have a slide about Desmoulins and a slide about Lavoisier, I must speak for 15 seconds on each, and have to hit the slide change dead on. But If I have a slide that says both were executed, I have the flexibility to switch from Desmoulins to Lavoisier at any time in the 15 seconds…

This approach, born out of practicality, made me wonder if focusing on the links as much as the nodes could be a good model for lots of storytelling in the age of the web. After all, much of the static content of the nodes is well covered in my sources, both offline and online. The new value I bring is linking them together into a new narrative. Jeff Jarvis says “Cover what you do best. Link to the rest”. But maybe what you do best is links, not to, but between great pieces of content.

Go to press. It seemed a shame to leave those slides unrealised. My tangible object could have been a standard book, with binding and everything, but I liked the idea that my slides should be as easy to remix on paper as they are in the slide sorter mode of my presentation software.  I chose Moo business cards. For v0.1 of the prototype, I’ve cheated a bit, using stickers to hold the text on the reverse of the cards.

Smooth on the inside, crunchy on the outside. (Armadillos!) Without a binding it was a lot easier to reshuffle my story, but it still needed some kind of container to hold it together and give a more satisfying permanence than the cards alone. A business card holder seemed the obvious thing. Just a few pounds bought an engraved one.

(This was the second card holder I received. The first was an ENGRAVING FAIL) Altogether the kit looks like this…

Make it mobile. I set up a separate page for each slide, and printed its URL on the back of the corresponding card. Thanks to WordPress.com’s mobile template, this means there’s an instant small-screen, hyper-linked up, comment-ready version of every page.

Rinse and repeat. This is v0.1, and there will probably be a 0.2, once I’ve had a chance to play with the story and its tangible form a bit more. One bit that’s not quite there yet is the link between physical and virtual. I toyed with using QR codes to make the link between paper and phone, and may still do so. The trouble was that making the QR code big enough to be readable by a phone made it too obtrusive, and I really want these cards to be made for people to use, not machines. I guess the ideal would be an app with image recognition so that just pointing the camera at each card is enough to bring up the relevant links and comment box. Unless you have a better idea.

It chimed with some stuff I’ve been wondering about lately, such as how the emergence of the web on devices smaller than a paperback could change the medium of the book itself. It certainly seems as if the publishing industry could be about to go through the kind of transformation that has beset the music business in the past decade.

And just as some of the greatest beneficiaries of the music revolution were the unsigned “long tail” artists, so I think the place to look first might be in the world of self-published, small books, pamphlets, chapbooks, and the like. These seem in a way to be more suited to the new mobile media than the big set-piece hardbacks like Johnson’s inestimable canon.

Ivor Cutler’s unique works apart, the foremost examples of the art must be the 16-page pocket books published by the late JL Carr under the Quince Tree Press imprint.

As you can see, I raided our bookshelves but frustratingly could only find one. I think my sister has more.

The books, some Carr’s own work, some reprints of out-of-copyright poetry, were distributed through East Anglian bookshops and tourist attractions, and made perfect pocket money purchases even in the days before Borders invented the gauntlet of “Little Books of” and YuGiOh cards at the checkout. I love the idea that Carr offered the books at two prices, one for adults and one for children.

Sadly Carr died the year that Amazon.com was founded. What would his pocket books have looked like in the internet age, I wondered?

So I’ve decided to make a prototype.

Next Wednesday night, I’m giving a talk at Ignite London, on some of the political and technological heroes of 1794. It’s a five minutes, 20 slides format, which somehow lends itself to minimal storytelling. Afterwards I’ll try to turn it into my first idea of a minimal book – a book minus the binding and much of the content, but still tangible enough to have value. It needs just enough to “excite the attentions of the ingenious,” possibly with a dash of Eno’s Oblique Strategies thrown in.

Bill of materials:

• 1 story
• 20 web pages
• 20 Moo cards
• 21 Stickers
• 1 Engraved card holder

We’ll see how it turns out next week.

If you were at the first ever British Ignite in Leeds in January, or any of the others around the world, you’ll know the deal:  20 slides advancing automatically every 15 seconds for five minutes – multiplied by dozens of speakers talking about technology, science, the arts and everything in-between.

The full London line-up includes:

• Ben Hammersley, The Sex Lives of the Great Renaissance Masters: How the Old Masters and their Mistresses Changed Art
• Craig Smith, The Upsides and Downsides of Standards (web, language and otherwise)
• Katy Lindemann, What We Can All Learn from Children
• John V Willshire, If Advertising is a Firework, Social Media is a Bonfire
• Ashley Benigo, Italy as a Country Not Found

… and many others.

My own talk is “1794 – so much to answer for” wherein I shall tell the stories of as many of my personal 18th Century heroes as possible, based on the strange coincidence that all of them encountered life-changing (some life-ending) events in that single world-changing year.

Eagle-eyed readers of this blog may recall that I scribbled a map of this name some time ago. I’ve taken it off the blog for now. You can probably still find it somewhere in Google’s cache, but No Spoilers!

[Also, I don't normally post directly about my dayjob on this, my personal, blog but am making an exception to mention that I'll be on a panel at Informa's Mobile User Experience conference, also in London on November 17 and 18 before I go over to Hammersmith for Ignite. If mobile user experience is your thing, this also has some very interesting speakers.]