Through a study of the Royal Small Arms Factory (Enfield Lock) and its influence upon product design and development, we examine an apparent anomaly. While accepting that Britain was the seat of the industrial revolution, several historians have claimed that American engineers held the technological advantage in the manufacture of small arms in the first half of the 19th century. Accounts of this disparity in the main have sought economic answers but this thesis examines technological change in relation to the weapons procurement system for the British armed force operated by the Board of Ordnance. Attention is focussed upon the political interplay between the public and private sectors of the gun trade, which was particularly influential in delaying the progress of the British military small arms industry towards the standardisation of weapons through a mechanised system of manufacture. As a result, reliance by the private sector upon traditional labour intensive methods of production remained perhaps longer than would otherwise have been the case. In addressing these issues it is argued that Britain's seeming hesitancy in maintaining her earlier rate of technological progress was the result of a veritable cocktail of events, with several factors at play. The investigation draws on primary documents and secondary accounts complemented by interviews with representatives of established small arms manufacturers, skilled craftsmen, weapons and machine tool experts and an examination of relevant artefacts, the results of which have cast doubt on some aspects of received interpretations of early part interchangeability. This study re-appraises the important role and character of one of the most influential and controversial "Ordnance" figures of the period, George Lovell. It sets the Board of Ordnance method of weapon procurement against the methods of other purchasing agencies, notably the East India Company. The results of the inquiry indicate that Britain's seeming technological pause in the field of small arms manufacture was more due to political influence and the administrative structures than to a lack of technical expertise on the part of its engineers, entrepreneurs and craftsmen.

This thesis investigates the ideals of home, and their determination, promoted in the representations of the Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition during the period 1944 to 1962 in order to explore how, through their dissemination, the Exhibition intervened in the definitions and politics of home. The thesis discusses popular ideals of home that emerged from the circumstances created by the Second World War. It situates the Ideal Home Exhibition in the immediate postwar exhibition context in order to reveal the relationship of the Exhibition to issues of design and the commercial interests of its exhibitors. The Exhibition is discussed as a business, assessing the objectives of the organisers and the nature of the 'audience' it attracted. The representations made by the Exhibition, particularly those in the 'Village of Ideal Homes' are examined in order to identify historical shifts in ideals of home in relation to housing design and the issues and political objectives of postwar reconstruction. It is then discussed as an intervention in the development of postwar consumerism, and as an intervention in the rise in postwar owner-occupancy. Finally, the Exhibition's representations are discussed in relation to its ideological address of nationalism, class and gender, and their construction of the 'ideal family' as the occupants of the 'ideal home'. The thesis questions the notion that the Exhibition had an ideal of home, and suggest that instead it was constructed from ideologies of home. The Exhibition is seen as an ideological apparatus that promoted ideals of consumption and property ownership through an address of class hegemony.

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