From : F T
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The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry and Invention, by William Rosen, Jonathan Cape RRP£20, 400 pages.
It was a collection of essays by the economic historian Arnold Toynbee, published posthumously in 1884, that first popularised “industrial revolution” as the name for the transformation that swept across Britain in the previous century.
There may be some problems with the term: the country hardly adopted the steam engine – which William Rosen rightly calls the period’s “signature gadget” – like a crowd storming into an Ikea sale. Thomas Newcomen may have put the first practical steam engine to work in 1712 to pump water from coal mines – but 90 years later water mills still produced more than three times as much power in Britain as steam.
Nonetheless, nobody
There may be some problems with the term: the country hardly adopted the steam engine – which William Rosen rightly calls the period’s “signature gadget” – like a crowd storming into an Ikea sale. Thomas Newcomen may have put the first practical steam engine to work in 1712 to pump water from coal mines – but 90 years later water mills still produced more than three times as much power in Britain as steam.
Nonetheless, nobody
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