What is needed for the steam revolution

Abstract

In four sequences, standing beside a huge steam wheel, Simon Schaffer discusses some of the things that are needed for the development of the steam revolution. These include reliable cylinders (from gun manufacture), good boilers ( from brewing), and feed-back mechanisms (from clocks). Only in England did one have the concentration of skills and the suitable social mobility to allow this to happen in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth century.