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The purpose of this paper is to examine a particular aspect of the history of the watchmaking industry during the eighteenth century. Attention is drawn to overlooked ideas and inventions and how years later they may become profitable business opportunities for entrepreneurs. The approach adopted allows examination of the development and commercialisation of a watch escapement mechanism, the rack lever, within the context of the development of other escapements. The rack lever was an escapement which was initially overlooked in the early part of the eighteenth century but which many decades later was reinvented and became a commercial success in the early nineteenth century.

Reference is made to the literature on entrepreneurship and acquisition of knowledge in the eighteenth century and the nature of watchmaking in the same epoch. The literature on entrepreneurship produces a framework for examining the actions that were taken to bring the rack lever escapement to market. The historical context within which the innovations occurred was examined to establish the events and circumstances surrounding the times when commercialisation took place. An account of the commercialisation of the rack lever escapement is presented.

The entrepreneurial opportunity examined in this article relates to a need to satisfy consumers with a reasonably accurate and reliable portable time piece. The historical context within which commercialisation took place was found to be significant. Attention to the escapement mechanism in watches was identified as the key to improving performance, and the focus of the paper is placed upon how this opportunity was satisfied through the means provided by the rack lever escapement. Alertness to the potential of already discovered but undeveloped ideas appears to be an additional feature behind the entrepreneurial activity. The paper shows that innovation can be a discontinuous process. It also indicates the relevance of modern-day knowledge brokers in facilitating the process of new product innovation.

Entrepreneurship and innovation along with research and development are all intrinsically linked in producing goods and services to satisfy customer wants and needs. Together, they represent a cornerstone which helps to establish a business and maintain its continued survival. Importantly, the development of new products is a key contributor to this end and innovation and entrepreneurship play their part in bringing this about. The paper suggests that new ideas can occur which may be deemed unsuitable for commercialisation at one period in time but which can at a future time be considered a temporary solution to meet an unfulfilled need in the market place. It argues for the case for reserving judgement on new ideas that are not commercialised and ensuring that knowledge of them is kept for posterity and made accessible to future generations.

The paper aims to extend research which has sought to explain Britain's early success as an industrial power by identifying the influence of religious doctrine of the Dissenting Protestant churches on the development of accounting practices in the factory. The concern is not with specific accounting practices but with the social and moral environment which provided the incentives and permissions that encouraged late eighteenth century English industrialists to develop the practices that they used.

The paper draws on the highly influential writings of social theorists such Weber, Sombart and Tawney to identify the religious doctrines that both motivated and justified the rational, ideological business practices of prominent businessmen.

The rise of accounting as a powerful tool of control and discipline was significantly assisted by the teaching of the Dissenting Protestant churches on “calling”. Religious beliefs provided permissions, justifications and incentives which underpinned the entrepreneurial energies, opportunities and successes of the early industrialists. Accounting could be seen to assume almost the aura and nascent legitimacy of a religious practice, a means of sanctifying practices which were otherwise reviled by social elites.

Despite encouragement from accounting researchers for histories of accounting which give greater credence to the reflexivity between accounting and society, this has yet to find a significant presence amongst the searches for beginnings in cost accounting where economic and management factors remain the overwhelming focus. Religious beliefs are shown to have been especially influential in the adoption of accounting practices by early industrialists who were frequently members of the Dissenting Protestant churches.

Reviews Leadhills Library, Britain’s first subscription library and also the first subscription library in Britain to have a working‐class base. It originated the ideology of mutual improvement as applied to libraries in Scotland, which has clear links with the social philosophy of the period and formed an organizational model for others to follow. Its book selection policy was both progressive and independent and much of its early stock still survives in situ in a building which has probably been occupied since the late eighteenth century. It functioned actively as a library from 1741 until the mid‐1960s and is still available for use today. The surviving stock, catalogued in 1985, totals about 2,500 volumes.

The aim of this paper is to examine the nature of newspaper advertisements published in the Irish newspaper The Freeman's Journal. This is approached by examining the construction of a selection of printed advertisements, including the strategies used in each, which appeared in The Freeman's Journal between 1763 and 1924.

The central primary source used is The Freeman's Journal and the selected advertisements. A number of primary and secondary sources are employed in the analysis of the featured advertisements in respect to the format, language and marketing strategies used in each.

The case study finds that there were a number of constants in the advertisements examined, as well as a number of advertising strategies employed from the eighteenth century onward, that have more commonly been associated with the 1918 to 1939 interwar period. It also found that the use of illustrations did not solely depend on twentieth century printing advances, but that printing developments did much to expand and progress advertising in Ireland.

This case study explores a little researched area in Irish advertising history.

A growing share of the literature in the fields of marketing and organizational theory is focusing on the uses of the past. This paper aims to propose an analysis of these uses over the long run and concludes that these uses of the past may themselves be historicized.

The paper uses accounting textbooks published in French from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. This study uses historical and organizational literature to account for observed variations.

Two conceptualizations of the past can be found in the sources from the period studied, depending on the period one considers, each of them leading to a different marketing strategy. In the first one, the past is presented as providing most or even all the value of what is offered in the present, as past experience serves as a stepping stone to a better product. The second conception breaks with these mostly positive views and presents the past as a dangerous routine, from which one must be freed to innovate.

Studying marketing uses of the past over the long run allows us to identify a limited set of possible sales pitches using the past to promote work and to identify the constraints orienting these pitches at any given time.

The paper aims to show the existence of the systemic yoyo structure in human thoughts so that the human way of thinking is proven to have the same structure as that of the material world.

Parallel comparison is used to reveal the underlying structure existing in human thoughts.

After highlighting all the relevant ideas and concepts, which are behind each and every crisis in the foundations of mathematics, it becomes clear that some difficulties in the authors' understanding of nature are originated from confusing actual infinities with potential infinities, and vice versa. By pointing out the similarities and differences between these two kinds of infinities, then some hidden contradictions existing in the system of modern mathematics are handily picked out. Then, theoretically, using the authors' yoyo model, it is predicted that the fourth crisis in the foundations of mathematics has appeared. And, a plan of resolution of this new crisis is provided.

This paper shows the first time in history that human thought, the material world, and each economic entity, share a common structure – the systemic yoyo structure. And it proves the arrival of the fourth crisis in mathematics by using systems modeling and listing several; contradictions hidden deeply in the foundations of mathematics.