“The Englishman Heathcoat wanted to make a lace-making machine. After trying so many times and failing he grew very poor. This made his wife very sad. Eventually, however, he succeeded and was able to give his wife lace.”

Featured on PDR in the collection Japanese Prints of Western Inventors, Artists and Scholars (1873)

A set of prints depicting famous Western inventors and scholars which seem to have been produced by the Japanese Department of Education. Although The Library of Congress only gives a rough date for them, between 1850 and 1900, the University of Tsukuba Library mentions a more specific 1873, a year which would make sense given the intense period of "westernisation" going on in Japan at this time, a presumed motive behind the making of the prints depicting such stalwarts of the industrial revolution in the West as James Watt and Richard Arkwright.