the printing press led to the Protestant era the protestant era led to the enlightenment era the enlightenment era led to science as a study science as a study led to the development of calculus and trigonometry necessary for engineering to occur including chemistry allowed for better metallurgy necessary for these machines to be built to their higher thousandths of an inch machining and casting.
There is some truth in that especially the bit about printing presses, Protestantism and the enlightenment but the early industrialists were not particularly educated men. The progress in textile weaving or steam engines were made by practical men who experimented by tinkering with existing tools. The Spinning Jenny was made using traditional materials. James Watt improved on the efforts of Newcomen, the metallurgy necessary for a Beam engine was really no different to that used in making cannons for the Royal Navy something that had been going on for more than a century.. It is said that George Stephenson was illiterate until he was 18.
Britain..............a truly remarkable country. An enigma wrapped up in a mystery. We are the world we are thanks in large part to that country and the people therein.
So the industrial revolution was a response to an ecological disaster. The British had chopped down all their trees and had dug so much coal out of the ground to the point that to extract more coal they had to be inventive and find a way to pump water out of the coal mines, thus creating the steam pump engine. This technology would later be applied to transportation, rail and ship.
I assume you mean speculative investment bubbles? There were plenty prior to the industrial revolution. The most infamouse being the Tulip Bubble in Holland and the South Sea Bubble that burst in 1720.
the question isn't why did it take thousands of years but what happened 10,ooo years ago to start us on this path of urbanization, and how remarkable it is that europe developed from the dark ages to industrialism in under 700 years
Could bubbles be connected to sparking economic growth?... Once business started growing, and wages rising, and markets increasing... could a large bubble have changed the nature of the economy? changed people's perception of the economy? and their incentives? Did bubbles exist before the industrial revolution?
Solipsistic and crass. It did not take "thousands of years' - every early city in Mesopotamia was its own Industrial Revolution. Victorian London was the first city in 2000 years to surpass a million in population but Rome had done it without spinning jennies and gunboat diplomacy. I place the rise of modern banking and credit systems and merchant classes of the Italian Renaissance as infinitely more important Wedgewood China. One could go a step further and say the Black Death initiated that by weakening the authority of the church, thinning out the population and creating a huge abundance of cheap land and ushering in mass literacy w/ the printing press. The "why did it happen here" question is no different than why did "it" happen in Ancient Egypt? Athens, in Rome, in Florence, in Venice, Spain, Columbus and the New World, etc?
There's nothing mysterious about it. In Britain from 1800 to 1900. 20,000 Waterwheels decreased in number. Windmills decreased in number. Englishman Thomas Newcomen's 1,500 Atmospheric Pumps disappeared. Scotsman James Watt's 500 Steam Engines and their descendants increased in number to 10,000,000 !!! For every SINGLE Waterwheel in 1800 there were now 500 Steam Engines in 1900 !!! That's an increase in Power Capacity for the whole country of 500 times, in one human's ( possible ) lifetime. This WAS the Industrial Revolution, it was a Power Revolution. It only required one single Invention. James Watt's Invention of the world's first PRACTICAL Steam Powered Engine in Scotland. Something that had never existed before. And you don't need a flowing river of water for any of them either, so they can be sited anywhere Take away Steam Power and you don't have an Industrial Revolution. It's not difficult to see, but it seems to me like a hell of a lot of people just DON'T WANT to see it! For reasons that I won't go into.
