Since August 29, 1835, MNN sister publication Mining Journal has recorded the turning of history's wheel—from coal, iron, and steam to critical minerals, renewable energy, and AI—each age echoing the last in motive, ambition, and consequence.

And at 190 years old, few publications have watched the evolution of industry as closely or for as long. 

It emerged in something of a historical crevice—not yet Victorian, but with the Napoleonic era a fading memory. It was the antebellum of US history—between the Founding Fathers stitching the states together and the South tearing them apart.

But, if you look past Britain's Dickensian trappings and America's frontier spirit, the world painted in the Journal's early pages reveals lessons that resonate in our own time of great industrial transformation.

A World Without Mining Journal

The United Kingdom, 1835: The chaos of the mines, blast furnaces, and ironworks that forged history's first industrial power lay beyond the ancient but shrinking agrarian calm, so close, yet so far away from London—and its public press.

Roughly 75 years had passed since the start of the phenomenon that'd be stamped into history as the 'Industrial Revolution'. And Britain's pit villages were the literal and metaphorical coalface to it all. Yet, the mining sector remained largely in the literal and metaphorical dark.

This communication gap between the capital of the world's largest empire and the industrial towns that sustained it inevitably hindered the flow of capital, information, and progress. But that was a sacrifice the island nation's leaders had been willing to make, ignore, or foster.

Industrial secrets were weapons. The revolution would not be publicised. Or shared. Not willingly, at least. Not when rivals sat in wait across the English Channel and Atlantic Ocean.

Barely two decades had passed since Britain had been at war with both the Americans and the French. The Redcoats blackened the young eyes of the US by burning the White House in 1814, and crushed the French Empire at Waterloo less than a year later.

So tightly was the law written to guard industrial secrets that even workers with general knowledge of technologies, such as steam engines, which were initially developed to pump water from mines, and coke-smelting, were banned from leaving British shores from the late 18th century until the repeal of the Prohibition on Emigration of Artisans Act in 1824.

But secrets do what secrets aren't supposed to, and revolutions are contagious. British technological know-how had been smuggled and leaked steadily since the 1700s.

And by 1835, the once-bridled British industrial endeavour had fully broken free and bolted well beyond its fence lines. It was a runaway train, ploughing through Belgium, France, the Prussian Ruhr Valley, and across those recently United States of America.

It'd been some time since the darkness in which Britain's industrial towns were kept did much of anything for the country, other than hinder its progress and cost lives and money.

Enter the Mining Journal

London stockbroker Henry English thought it well past time to shed some light. And he'd do it by creating a journal dedicated to mining.

The feedback began filling English's letterbox before the first issue had even gone to print.

One correspondent, identified only as T.S. of Clerkenwell—a district on the northern border of the City of London—wrote to English on August 26, three days before launch, calling the appearance of a journal devoted to mining affairs "new in the history of the times".

The letter captured the paradox of the age: Britain's mines powered the world's largest empire, yet "the greater portion of the public press either omit all notice […] or underrate the importance of the operations of those engaged in it".

A consequence, T.S. noted, was that "many of the speculations that have proved such destructive failures, and brought home to those engaged in them a large portion of anxiety, disappointment, and loss, have originated in the grossest ignorance or fraud." Too many schemes, the letter concluded, "have been concocted by ignorant and designing men," with victims following "blindfold" into ventures "begun in ignorance and ended in sorrow."

English, too, had been surprised with the length of time that had expired without a publication of this type, which he expressed in the Journal's first editorial. But he quickly turned his mind to how much progress had been made in its absence, and what could be achieved in its presence.

"If we were alone to consider the importance of our metallic products, iron, copper, tin, lead, and other metals, it becomes a matter of astonishment that no journal has ever been published to record discoveries and the results of labours which might, if registered, have been productive of so much advantage to the interests of society," he wrote, adding that Britain had reached a "high station in scientific acquirements" without any "practical work of reference from which information might be collected".

In this first editorial, he hinted at the areas Mining Journal would pursue, launching what would become decades-long campaigns for transparency, safety, and education in Britain's mining sector.

"The loss of life arising, not from want of experience, but from that of the application of science to operations of this nature, should alone be sufficient to justify the establishment of a medium of communication, through which practical men might transmit the result of their labours, and scientific men the issue of their researches," he wrote.

It wasn't the secrecy that allowed Britain a decades-long head start in industrialisation; it had more to do with the country's advanced capital and financial stability, trust in institutions, absence of feudal restrictions, and the fortune of geography and geology.

The latter aside, these factors exist in a state of flux. They must be maintained, repaired, and adaptable.

English and his compatriots couldn't have known it at the time, but they were living in the sunset of the first instalment of the Industrial Revolution.

The early wave of innovation was cresting. Britain risked becoming complacent and a victim of its own success: lost in the laissez-faire, stuck with legacy assets, antiquated by a classical education system, and crippled by a neglect for workers.

To English's credit, he saw much of the writing on the wall, and before the year was through, he had filled Mining Journal's pages with it.

His crusade quickly found its enemies—and its enduring causes.

Lifting the Veil Over Industry

Not all were pleased with the arrival of the Journal. Within weeks of launch, English was forced to defend its commitment to transparency, noting that some mining agents were "displeased with publicity being given to their communications," with the editor suggesting the reason was that it would allow others to "detect fallacious statements."

He was quick to criticise companies that had an "absence of any documents from whence information may be collected by the shareholder" and warned readers to doubt the value of any such undertaking.

The Journal had no patience for such opacity, with English establishing its core mission early on: "We have one object, that is, to support the mining interests, […] and to throw aside the veil where deception is attempted to be practised."

Where the law would fail to compel public companies to meet their requirements, the Journal would expose them.

The publication also acted as an early harbinger to one of history's great stock bubbles.

"The Railway mania, which has caused so considerable an advance in the price of Railway Shares, is a subject to which we have to direct the serious attention of capitalists—the extent to which speculation is carried calls for observation, and while we cheerfully lend our aid in promoting these national undertakings, we feel it our duty to direct attention to the prices which the Shares have attained," English wrote on September of 1835, a decade ahead of the market crash. 

Counting the Human Cost

Perhaps the most potent campaign was one addressing the industry's human cost. This would be a long-fought battle, with English, on Boxing Day, throwing the Journal's first punch at the press and government alike for their neglect.

While the press "teemed with melancholy statements of accidents", the journal's editor was frustrated that the fault was so often laid at the individual miners' feet. And the "valuable information acquired from the examination of some of the most scientific and practical men" during accident inquiries was largely ignored.

He questioned why there weren't public calls for legal enactments to protect miners, blaming the lack of protection on the greed of proprietors.

Learning Classics Before Coal

Britain may have been, by far, the world's largest miner, but English looked with envy to regions almost untouched by industrialisation for their foresight in mining education.

"Indebted as this country is, in a great measure, to its metallic products for its national wealth, it has been ever a matter of surprise and regret that we should be without any School of Mines […] while Germany and Hungary boast their colleges of Freyburg and Schemnitz," he wrote on October 3.

Tracking Competing Models of Industrial Power

These campaigns—the Journal launching a British School of Mines prospectus, exposing various clandestine public companies, and pursuing mine worker reforms—were all underway before the end of 1835. 

With the dawn of 1836, Britain was well established as the global hegemon. It was still the spring of Pax Britannica. But as English and the Mining Journal had identified, there were issues in the country's aging engine room. 

It would need a tune-up to compete with the rising competition in the decades ahead. 

In both Europe and North America, new models were being created to challenge Britain's industrial might. 

The German states presented a stark contrast. Where Britain's mining sector evolved chaotically through various private enterprises and individual scientific brilliance, the loose confederation of Prussian states had a foundation of methodical order with state-backed industrial policy, crown-directed pits, and the technical universities of English's envy. 

The US, meanwhile, with its raw, untamed potential, carved out its own course. Private enterprise and highly fragmented regional finance were far less integrated than in the UK. Government oversight was almost non-existent. 

Each model carried its own promises and pitfalls. And in the decades that followed, Mining Journal would chronicle how these competing visions played out. 

The questions the publication grappled with throughout the 1800s echo through every industrial transformation since: What might an industrial leader do when its early advantages erode? When do trade barriers turn from a diplomatic weapon to a dead weight? Does the cost of doing what's right become the price of staying ahead? Should governments pick winners—or let markets decide?

We'll dive deeper into what those archives reveal: how industrial leaders navigate decline, how challengers rise, and what patterns emerge when nations compete for the resources that power civilisation. 

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This is the first in a series examining how Mining Journal's 190 years of coverage illuminates patterns in industrial transition, from the steam age to the battery era.