My name is Maurice Halton. I live in Horwich, near Bolton in Lancashire, England. I am a student of History and Economic History. My area of specialisation is the Manufacturing Engineering Industry in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

_{In the early 19th Century Lancashire's engineering companies pioneered technology. Many thrived well into the 20th Century. Some, not many, still exist today. Why did so few survive and why did so many vanish? I would like to discover the real reasons for the sharp decline in manufacturing engineering in Lancashire in the late 20th Century and I want to make sure that our descendants have available archives and records of as many of these famous firms as possible.}

The history of the Manufacturing Engineering Industry began in Lancashire in the late 18th Century and the early part of the 19th Century. By 1890 Lancashire made machinery of just about every conceivable type; machinery which was considered the best in the world and which the world valued so highly that it literally beat a path to the doors of Lancashire firms which were as famous then as are companies such as IBM, Sony, Ford and Mitsubishi today_.

What happened? In the early 21^st century there are very few manufacturing engineers remaining in Lancashire, even though many of the original firms survived until well into the third quarter of the 20th century.

If you ask, you will be told, depending on who answers, that 'it was Margaret Thatcher' - 'it was the militant Trade Unions' - 'it was the Technology' - 'we just don't do that anymore' and other, equally trite, anecdotal and unsatisfactory, responses.

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