This is the title of a book I am now reading that is actually story about the railroad steam engine and why it was the U.K. where it was created and why that had to be.
That sounds arrogant but reading the book you find it the RR steam engine is just the final product, though it was the product that changed the entire world and how it functioned.
To speak in an abstract of an abstract, i.e. to give a good abstract of the book here would take pages, but any way, it does say ideas or even physical experimentation that were put in their finalized , i.e. mass produced, had often existed, or in physical form, been created centuries to millennium before the those in the U.K. had them being mass produced.
BUT
The most interesting part is , it tells how the government systems in other nations made it impossible for it happen there, with one, of many being the way the Roman Catholic church controlled ideas as RC monasteries were NOT just groups of men living in silence praying to God, this is not even close to the entire story, but Priests with men who entered but saw that sitting in quiet prayer for a dude was a waste of his God given abilities and sent him to a monastery, where many, whose existence was to educate and advance ideas of physical sciences, advanced theories and experimented with ideas that later brought about the Industrial age.
It was the Italian Medici who funded some of it but their greed was it is mine, mine , mine to the point the ideas existed , at times a physical product to prove them but they went nowhere.
BUT again at that time, England was the land where ideas for the common good were to be exchanged and developed, for profit, which is why patents were first used in England but later on, leading men of the sciences, (that helped create the RR locomotive later on) split between -- greatest good for the greatest number (big government is good for you) -- and -- Greater private reward produces greater improved ideas.
Of the myriad of things you would never connect or really consider because the pee-poor history taught nowadays, a modern evacuation and examination of a large Holy Roman Empire era iron foundry proved that they had Iron of a quality not equaled till the middle of the 1800s.
Plus were capable of producing quantities not equaled till the mid-eighteen hundreds at the -- another being -- high quality steel existed centuries before it was produced in quantity.
One reason the so called Iron-age , which the book says, sounds good, but in reality is a misnomer, for the reasons I just wrote, it existed millennium before the Iron Age started also. Why it was so long was ---- What was missing was some thing that needed the iron and steel that could be made, therefore; there was no need to increase in production, actually with the end of the Holy Roman Empire foundry production was all but eliminated.
An over simplification of what created the technical explosion was -- charcoal that supplied what little industry that existed was going to disappear -- surface coal was a poor substitute -- hard coal was under ground and water level quickly made getting difficult -- so charcoal kept on being used -- a way to pump water out had to created that did not need a water source run the pumps -- steam engines that finally pumped the water could not need so much coal it was cheaper to use some other form of power -- steam engines that met that requirement increased production -- moving product could not be dependent on accessible water ways ...
SO
Now this is not the end, way before the locomotive was created , no, now it was cottage industries, pitted against the new created factory which actually resulted skirmishes with people dying and the need/desire for a locomotive is still in the future abit ...
Most interesting was it was the exclusionary doctrine of major religions, most of the men who turned ideas into reality were Christians (the book does not push this fact but tells how this had an influence that without it would not have happened) but were rejects due to doctrines of major RC, Lutheran, Church of England that forced them to go to , or form -- (the religious wars were a major reason, without which a lot the advancement of physical science would not have happened, people said I am getting the hell out of here ) -- groups , organizations and education institutes that welcomed those banished from the home location.
I.E. English laws existed that banned them from govt. support educational establishments but did not ban creation of establishments that welcomed the banned gents.
It was these establishment where men of quaker, presbyterian, methodist and other less known doctrines gathered to forward science. (One of the interesting things is how men of a faith that banned them from creating ideas for lethal products got around that edict, without breaking from their faith.)
It also shows how men of different nations, flowed between countries so that while an idea may have taken fruit in a country, location is the only claim that, that country , can use to say it was theirs. (Much like the German space program happened to take fruit here .)
Another is how many gents who without whose work things would not exist, one does not know exists unless you read technical journals that say so, they are other wise do not exist in history books.
The last I will mention here, that the political doctrine that powered the French revolution, (similar to the fecal debris Democrats are backing now) turned France from rival to England into a third rate country as far as technology goes.
As I read this, I see God working with the pathetic reality man has given him here, or even why some Christen doctrines are what they are.
Without some of the draconian doctrines that drove men out, ideas would not have been born so his plan would work in his time scale.
Fascinating.
