The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention by William Rosen (PDF)

Description

The sweeping true story of how the steam engine changed the world, from the acclaimed author of Miracle CureIf all measures of human advancement in the last hundred centuries were plotted on a graph, they would show an almost perfectly flat line—until the eighteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution would cause the line to shoot straight up, beginning an almost uninterrupted march of progress. In The Most Powerful Idea in the World, William Rosen tells the story of the men responsible for the Industrial Revolution and the machine that drove it—the steam engine. In the process he tackles the question that has obsessed historians ever since: What made eighteenth-century Britain such fertile soil for inventors? Rosen’s answer focuses on a simple notion that had become enshrined in British law the century before: that people had the right to own and profit from their ideas. The result was a period of frantic innovation revolving particularly around the promise of steam power. Rosen traces the steam engine’s history from its early days as a clumsy but sturdy machine, to its coming-of-age driving the wheels of mills and factories, to its maturity as a transporter for people and freight by rail and by sea. Along the way we enter the minds of such inventors as Thomas Newcomen and James Watt, scientists including Robert Boyle and Joseph Black, and philosophers John Locke and Adam Smith—all of whose insights, tenacity, and ideas transformed first a nation and then the world. William Rosen is a masterly storyteller with a keen eye for the “aha!” moments of invention and a gift for clear and entertaining explanations of science. The Most Powerful Idea in the World will appeal to readers fascinated with history, science, and the hows and whys of innovation itself.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐It’s quite possible that there are better histories of invention, particularly the first great inventions of the Industrial Revolution, but I don’t know what they are. The author can be tiresomely self-indulgent–the reader has to suffer through lines like “things were literally heating up”–but eventually the story of invention is told reasonably well, for iron, steam, and cloth. The importance of individual inventors is massively downplayed today, both by political and economic historians, for what seems to me snobbish reasons. There is nothing less fashionable these days than the middle-class optimism of the Victorian era. The author doesn’t speculate enough, it seems to me, on the mind shift that took Europeans away from the otherwordliness of the cloister, the importance of “Arabic” numerals, the conviction of both Francis Bacon and Descartes that nature must be obeyed in order to be mastered (who ever wanted to “master” Her before?), the Protestant emphasis on literacy, the disbarment of English dissenters from the learned professions, etc., etc. Some other commenters have complained that the information on the actual operations of the machinery is lacking. Well, if you want to build your own steam engine, I guess this isn’t for you.

⭐Howdy all,This is some excellent history with a personal approach to explaining how the-“Rocket”, the first successful RR locomotive came to be, by starting with Hero’s crude steam turbine, NTM asking questions about how inventors invent, including the whole process and culture of invention was created in England, and answering using current research on the brain, besides the culture and development of the idea as property by Thomas Coke and John Locke among other threads of development (“each little improvement”) the author seeks to answer.Other questions such as if more people gets you more inventors as some attempting to explain the industrial revolution claim, why England and not China, or even France since it had three times as many people?The author ends with a brief summary of the locomotive contest, provides a fitting conclusion by quoting from an 1858-59 lecture or speech of Abraham Lincoln’s on “Discoveries and Inventions” (which he agrees with most reviewers as not one of his best) but emphasizes Lincoln’s closing remark that patent laws added “the fuel of interest to the fire of genius” that has been etched in stone now at the US Patent Office, is quite an appropriate end to the author’s description of that very important creationOn the negative side, the reference to the earth being 33 trillion cubic kilometers (in a somewhat facetious side note) is a bit off being much closer to 1.083 trillion cubic kilometers, and some data could not be found on the index pages mentioned, though its in the book somewhere, and a problem common with many books.

⭐This book is an attempt to give a reply to a complex question: why the Industrial Revolution started in England between the 18th and the 19th century and not in another place or in another time, for example in Classic Greece or ancient China. The Author analyzes the sociological, hystorical and geopolitical circumstances that caused the explosion of inventions and innovations in engineering that shaped the industrial world of today, using the development of the steam engine (from Papin to Stephenson) and its application as leit-motif. According to the author the key factor in this development was the evolution of the patent system, that is at the basis of the definition of intellectual property and the economical exploitation of human ingenuity. The narration starts slowly, and personally I find it even a bit verbose, as the Author himself practically admits. At midlength the narration gains momentum and becomes a whirlwind of intertwined inventions and inventors. It gives numerous hints for thinking and demonstrates (one more time) that development is a matter of persons who can grow up intellectually and economically only if the surrounding environments foster and nurtures them.

⭐Others have given an general overview of this book; no need to repeat that. Several have noted that if you are interested in steam engines, this book won’t help you to understand them. A major flaw is the lack of explanatory drawings and diagrams to supplement the original drawings from patent applications. But this isn’t a book about how steam engines work, so that lack can be forgiven. What can’t are the errors in fact. I was reading happily along, marvelling at the toys of Alexandrian and enjoying the sweeping scope of the narrative, until we rolled into the Elizabethan period, an era I happen to know something about. There the train drove right off the tracks. The capsule biography of Francis Bacon is not just wrong, it’s bizarrely, stupefyingly wrong. Rosen must have copied it from one of the Rosicrucian websites he rightly makes fun of in a footnote. He cites the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography for his Bacon data, but that article is, of course, perfectly correct. OK, it’s just one short biography, not central (quite) to the theme of the book, but it is so egregiously bad that the author’s credibility evaporated in a flash. Francis Bacon is a major historical figure. If his bio is wrong, why should I believe the stories about George Stephenson or the more minor contributors to the development of early steam engines? From that point forward, I started skimming and taking it all with a grain of salt. The central thesis – that copyright/patent law was essential to the industrial revolution – is interesting. But I’ll have to read another book to actually learn about the inventors and inventions mentioned in this one.

⭐I found this a fascinating book, about a fascinating subject. William has taken Stephenson’s steam engine as focal point of an exploration of history, technology and ideas. This is far more than a history of one steam engine, it is a book that uses the advance of technology to reflect on social, economic, legal, political, economic and philosophical issues.Chapter 12- ‘Strong steam’ is the chapter that grabbed my attention the most; giving the best summary of the birth of the ‘Cornish’ engine I have found so far. The story told within that chapter is intertwined with the one told in ‘The Last Great Cornish Engineer’, a book that explains how William West took the high pressure beam engine to the peak of its development.navsbooks.wordpress.com

⭐The Last Great Cornish Engineer: William West of Tredenham

⭐The Last Great Cornish Engineer: William West of TredenhamSketch of the life of William West C.E. of Tredenham-The last of the great Cornish Engineers

⭐A thorough and very eloquent story of how mankind broke out of the Malthusian trap and evaded extreme poverty. Rosen’s assertion, which he defends quite well, is that the main invention were the institutions which promoted inventions. Especially the patent system, which encouraged the hungry artisans from a modest background.But he also explains a lot of the important men and inventions in detail. The steam engines of Savery, Newcomen, Watt and Evans, the steal foundries of Darby, the textile factories of Arkwright and Hargreaves and railways of Trevithick and Stephenson.

⭐An inspiring book on the Industrial Revolution, the inventors and inventions that made it possible, and the philosophical, scientific, legal and economic milieux out of which it emerged. Rosen maintains that the key to invention and industrialisation is the law of patents and intellectual property in general – “the most powerful idea in the world”.Inventions covered include the steam engine, iron smelting, cotton spinning and weaving machines, the steam locomotive and many more. The factory system is covered, as are the coal mining, railway and many other industries. Rosen vividly describes at length the struggles and triumphs of the numerous inventors in many countries and their inventions. His text makes clear just how many inventions go to make up an industrial revolution, and how many brilliant and tenacious inventors were needed to push the ‘project’ along.The scientific background is explored, and it emerges that certain scientific ideas, such as an understanding of the nature of the vacuum and the power of atmospheric pressure, were essential – contrary to assertions elsewhere that the Industrial Revolution was improvised by engineering “hackers” with no scientific knowledge. But, please note: the science of thermodynamic came after the steam engine, despite the fact that it is the science that explains how it works!The question of population and invention is raised and examined, and Rosen concludes that patent laws are no use to small states, and that specialisation, invention and therefore the potentiality for industrialisation increase with population. The reflexive nature of the process is highlighted – industrialisation bootstrapping itself. Other topics covered include Coke and Locke on patent law and the ownership of ideas, Malthus on population, Adam Smith and Ricardo on economics and early theories of heat.Although the patent system may be the key to industrialisation, it is surely not the point of origin out of which the modern democratic industrial world has emerged. To address that mystery we need to go further back in European history and ask about rationality and the Enlightenment, the system of competing European states, the republican style of government and many other issues – but that is not a criticism of this book.The only criticism to my mind concerns its deeply uninformative modern-style contents list – seemingly intended more to catch the eye of someone browsing in a bookshop than to show the structure of the work. This is a shame because a good contents list is needed to navigate a book that is more of a rollicking romp through history rather than a structured thesis. Perhaps the publisher is responsible for this lapse which is likely to have halved sales of the book.All in all, an excellent read – as good as Rosen’s earlier work “Justinian’s Flea”, and on an entirely different and indeed even more important historical subject.

⭐This is a very good piece of industrial and scientific history

⭐An excellent introduction to the subject. Interesting review of the factors operating in the background to enable the Industrial Revolution to happen where and when it did. Thoroughly recommended

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