Collective invention during the British Industrial Revolution: the case of the Cornish pumping engine
论证了竞争企业共享技术知识的集体发明环境是工业化早期创新的关键来源，并以康沃尔矿区为例，分析其经济和技术条件如何催生这种环境并影响创新速度。
In this paper we argue that what Robert Allen has termed as collective invention settings (that is settings in which competing firms share technological knowledge) were a crucial source of innovation during the early phases of industrialization. Until now this has been very little considered in the literature, which has focussed on the patent system as the main institutional arrangement driving the rate of innovation. The paper presents one of these collective invention settings, the Cornish mining district, in detail. We study the specific economic and technical circumstances that led to the emergence of this collective invention setting and we analyse its consequences on the rate of technological innovation.