LAST week the Lancashire Telegraph launched a major campaign to put a spotlight on the achievements, achievers and potential of Pennine Lancashire.

Today Bill Jacobs looks as how a history of innovations and inventions have shaped the area's industrial and business success over 200 years.

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PENNINE Lancashire is historically a cradle of innovation and provided something practically every home in Britain still has - wallpaper.

Not only was this revolutionary product invented in Darwen by Charles and Harold Potter in 1839 but one of its world-leading manufacturers Graham & Brown thrives today in neighbouring Blackburn.

Founded in 1946, creating the innovative Superfresco paintable wallpaper, the company is credited with leading an international renaissance in the product as an inspiring 21st Century interior design item.

Chief executive Andrew Graham said:“For us, Pennine Lancashire is very much the home of wallpaper and we’re proud to have played a role in its development.

“Today, we still design and manufacture all our products here in Blackburn and, like the Lancashire Telegraph, we’re passionate about celebrating our part of the world.”

Still in Darwen is Crown Paints, which sprang out of Walpamur, which has been a leading innovator with once-coat and non-drip paints over recent decades and entered the web world with its ground-breaking 'My Room Painter' app in 2013.

On the IT front, Blackburn is home to Promethean World which invented the revolutionary interactive 'whiteboards' fort the globe's classrooms.

This spirit of innovation began with James Hargreaves invention of the Spinning Jenny in Oswaldtwistle in 1764 which revolutionised the weaving process and put Pennine Lancashire at the beating heart of the cotton industry.

In 1844 Great Harwood man John Mercer's development of the cloth softening process 'Mercerisation' ensured Pennine Lancashire continued to mean cotton.

In 1941, Terylene, one of the world first man-made fibres was patented in Accrington ensuring the area continued to clothe the world.

While Pennine Lancashire was decorating our homes, since 1880 Richard Kenyon's invention of the Ewbank sweeper in Accrington was cleaning them .

The town is also home of the world famous Nori brick, which built the Empire State Building in New York and Blackpool Towers as well as millions of homes.

And every time Pennine Lancashire's people fly off on holiday, they can thank Sir Frank Whittle's jet engines developed in secret during the Second World War in Clitheroe and Barnoldswick.

Petrol heads can also thank Blackburn engineer Keith Duckworth for the ultra-lightweight Cosworth DVF engine which has been the model for Grand Prix car power plants since 1967.