What Is A Luddite?

A Luddite is now referred to as someone who resists technological advances and prefers to keep things 'as they were'.
The term is originally derived, it is thought, from a Neil Ludd who came from Leicester and who is referred to in the Oxford English Dictionary as a 'lunatic living about 1779'. No one quite knows why Ludd entered into popular folklore, but it is thought that he destroyed a knitting machine for stockings at the factory in which he worked. Somehow, he then became a national (anti) hero. So the term Ludd was taken to mean someone who opposed the Industrial Revolution.
Luddites became very active during the years 1811-1816, when they organised sabotage attacks on machinery which destroyed their livelihoods. Luddites were usually very skilled craftsmen who knew that revolutionising production technques would effectively render them unemployed. Even if they could be employed in the new factories, they would not have the same income and so they feared technology and wanted to destroy it.

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