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The Making of Steam Power Technology: A Study of Technical Change during the British Industrial Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2006

ALESSANDRO NUVOLARI
ALESSANDRO NUVOLARI
Affiliation:
Eindhoven University of Technology
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Extract

Writing in 1845 Friedrich Engels (and with him many other informed contemporaries) had few hesitations in pointing out the driving forces of the epochal transformation he was witnessing:

The history of the proletariat in England begins with the second half of the last century, with the invention of the steam engine and the machinery for working cotton. These inventions gave rise, as is well known to an industrial revolution, a revolution which altered the whole civil society; one, the historical importance of which is only now beginning to be recognized.

Type
SUMMARIES OF DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 66 , Issue 2 , June 2006 , pp. 472 - 476
Copyright
© 2006 The Economic History Association

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