内容简介
If all measures of human advancement in the last hundredcenturies were plotted on a graph, they would show an almostperfectly flat line—until the eighteenth century, when theIndustrial 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 tellsthe story of the men responsible for the Industrial Revolution andthe machine that drove it—the steam engine. In the process hetackles the question that has obsessed historians ever since: Whatmade eighteenth-century Britain such fertile soil for inventors?Rosen’s answer focuses on a simple notion that had become enshrinedin British law the century before: that people had the right to ownand profit from their ideas.
In The Most Powerful Idea in the World, William Rosen tellsthe story of the men responsible for the Industrial Revolution andthe machine that drove it—the steam engine. In the process hetackles the question that has obsessed historians ever since: Whatmade eighteenth-century Britain such fertile soil for inventors?Rosen’s answer focuses on a simple notion that had become enshrinedin British law the century before: that people had the right to ownand profit from their ideas.