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THE UNBOUND PROMETHEUS
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When dealing with ambiguous terms, the first duty of a writer is definition. The words 'industrial revolution in small letters-usually refer to that complex of technological innovations which, by substituting machines for human skill and inanimate power for human and animal force, brings about a shift from handicraft to manufacture and, so doing, gives birth to a modern economy. In this sense, the industrial revolution has already transformed a number of countries, though in unequal degree; other societies are in the throes of change; the turn of still others is yet to come.
The words sometimes have another meaning. They are used to de- note any rapid significant technological change, and historians have spoken of an 'industrial revolution of the thirteenth century~,an 'early industrial revolution', the 'second industrial revolution', an 'industrial revolution in the cotton south'. In this sense, we shall eventually have as many 'revolutions' as there are historically demarcated sequences of industrial innovation, plus all such sequences as will occur in the future; there are those who say, for example, that we are already in the midst of the third industrial revolution, that of automation, air transport, and atomic power.
Finally, the words, when capitalized, have still another meaning. They denote the first historical instance of the breakthrough from an agrarian, handicraft economy to one dominated by industry and machine manufacture. The Industrial Revolution began in England in the eighteenth century, spread therefrom in unequal fashion to the countries of Continental Europe and a few areas overseas, and transformed in the span of scarce two lifetimes the life ofWestern man, the nature of his society, and his relationship to the other peoples of the world. The Industrial Revolution, as it took place in western Europe, is the subject of this book.
The heart of the Industrial Revolution was an interrelated succession of technological changes. The material advances took place in three areas: (I) there was a substitution of mechanical devices for human skills; (2) inanimate power-in particular, steam-took the place of human and animal strength; (3) there was a marked improvement in the getting and working of raw materials, especially in what are now known as the metallurgical and chemical industries.
DAVID S. LANDES - Personal Name
1st Edtion
0 521 09418 6
NONE
THE UNBOUND PROMETHEUS
Management
English
1998
USA
1-578
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