A hand-colored etching presumably depicting Ned Ludd, May 1812
2 May 2025
The word Luddite presents an interesting case. It’s a word that was used for over a century, the early nineteenth century, albeit rather rarely, to refer to a specific historical series of events. Then, in the late 1940s, use of the word exploded, but with a shift in its original meaning.
The word has its roots in the early days of the industrial revolution, as mechanization began to be put to widespread use in the English textile industry at the turn of the nineteenth century. Up to this point, textile workers had been highly skilled craftsmen who commanded high wages and respectable social status. Being a textile worker was a good living. But the owners of textile mills, like capitalists everywhere, continually sought to reduce the wages of their workers, but until the advent of mechanization they were rather unsuccessful—the skilled weavers were essential to their business. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, however, machines had reached a level of sophistication where they could do the jobs of those highly skilled and highly paid workers. Out of this situation emerged the Luddites.
The Luddites take their name from Ned Ludd, or Lud, an almost certainly fictional character, a weaver who in 1779 allegedly destroyed several textile machines in Leicestershire. There is no strong evidence to demonstrate that such a disturbance actually happened, much less that Ned Ludd was a real person. References to Ned Ludd and the movement bearing his name would not appear until several decades later.
Starting in 1811 there were a series of riots at English textile mills in which the workers destroyed the machines that were taking their jobs. The loosely organized, underground movement professed that “Captain Ludd” or “King Lud” was their ringleader. It was a useful bit of propaganda, but it’s unlikely that there was a single leader of the movement, and far less that a person named Ned Ludd was the leader. These original Luddites were not opposed to technology per se; they were protesting the loss of their jobs. At issue was economic disruption, not distrust or dislike of machines.
The earliest reference to Ned Ludd that I have found is in the Times of London for 16 December 1811
On Wednesday, the 11th inst. was committed for trial at the Assizes, John Ingham, a workman employed by Mr. William Nunn, lace-manufacturer, for feloniously writing and sending a letter, signed “Ned Lud and Co.” directed to William Nunn and Co. threatening to break and destroy their frames, and injure his person and that of Thomas Clarke,. [sic] concerned in such manufacture; and, on the same day, William Parkes and George Shaw, for entering a dwelling-house, on the 25th of November, and breaking five stocking-frames.
And the earliest use of Luddite that I have found is also from the Times six weeks later, on 30 January 1812
About two o’clock on Sunday morning, an express arrived from Ruddington, stating that 1[3?] frames had been destroyed at that place, and that the Luddites were engaged in their mischievous work when the messenger came away. On Saturday and Sunday nights, not fewer than 60 frames were destroyed. Ludd has declared his intention of destroying all frames without exception. Five armed Luddites stopped a carrier about a mile from Mansfield turnpike; and having collected from his waggon every article obnoxious to them, set fire to the same.
And Luddism is in place by that September. From the Hull Packet of 15 September 1812:
Our correspondent in Huddersfield, under date of the 10th inst. says:—“Several persons have been apprehended on various charges of Luddism, and are now in custody here.
Luddite continued to be used to refer to this historical labor movement through to the mid twentieth century. When people spoke of Luddites, they were referring specifically to those who destroyed the textile machines in the early nineteenth century. The word was also not especially common, which is not surprising given its limited meaning in reference to the specific historical events.
But starting in the late 1940s, Luddite started to be used to refer to those who objected to new technologies generally. There is this from the Houston Chronicle of 15 February 1947 that uses the term not to refer to the historical Luddites but to an anti-technology attitude:
I’m not suggesting that we assume a Luddite attitude toward atomic energy but even the most receptive enthusiasm for a new device requires more regard for social consequences than a Marxist is willing to assume.
And with this new, anti-technology meaning came an increase in the word’s use. Google Ngram shows a 300-fold increase in the word’s use from 1960 to 2000. A sudden rise from a steady, low level of use over the previous century and a half.*
The change can be attributed to two factors: the new, computer revolution and the shift to a more general meaning, which made the term more useful—Luddite no longer just referred to a specific and rather obscure event of a century past but to contemporary attitudes toward the increasing intrusion of new technologies into people’s lives.
I also found this in the Washington Post from 20 October 1947. It uses Luddite in the historical sense, but the context is technologies for distributing music and their impact on the musicians’ labor market. Although the specific technologies in question are no longer phonographs and juke boxes, but rather internet streaming systems, the context is the same:
The point of principle upon which Mr. J. Caesar Petrillo has declared war to the death against the phonographs and juke boxes of these United States is an interesting modern variant of Luddism. The Luddites, as you remember, were the handweavers and other artisans of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire and some other parts of England who, in the early nineteenth century, undertook to destroy the machines which had thrown them out of work and reduced them to destitution. It is not apparent that many members of Mr. Petrillo’s American Federation of Musicians are now in danger of starving because mechanical music has destroyed the market for their special skills; but Mr. Petrillo is making sure that there never will be such a danger.
For more on the original Luddites, NPR’s Planet Money podcast has an episode that nicely encapsulates the history of the movement.
* = Google Ngram results should be taken with a grain of salt. The data set is rife with metadata and OCR errors. But when Google Ngram shows a marked shift like this one, the trend is probably valid, even if the exact numbers may be somewhat off.
Sources:
“According to Letters Received Yesterday from, Nottingham.” Times (London), 30 January 1812, 3/1. Gale Primary Sources: The Times Digital Archive.
Google Books Ngram Viewer. s.v. luddite.
“Hull, Sept. 14, 1812.” Hull Packet (England), 15 September 1812, 3/4. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.
“King Ludd: 1947 Model.” Washington Post, 20 October 1947, 6/3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“Nottingham Riots.” Times (London), 16 December 1811, 3/3. Gale Primary Sources: The Times Digital Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary Online. Second Edition, 1989. s.v. “Luddism, n.” “Luddite, n. (and adj.).”
Sokolsky George E. “The Case Against David Lilienthal.” Houston Chronicle (Texas), 15 February 1947, 2/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“When Luddites Attack.” NPR: Planet Money, 6 May 2015.
Image credit: Walker and Knight, 1812. British Museum. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.