IN a world suffused with centuries of inventions, can one idea be chosen as the one that changed the world? Yes, says William Rosen – steam engine. In his very interesting book The Most Powerful Idea in the World, A Story of Steam, Industry and Invention he says its discovery changed the way humans worked, moved and lived. And it affected people across continents.
Rosen says that it is the steam engine that set the ball rolling on industrial revolution, “a machine that changed everything, up to and including the idea of invention itself.” William Thomson, Lord Kelvin said “the steam engine has done much more for science than science has done for the steam engine.”
Why is steam engine so important? He says because it inaugurated two centuries of mass transportation, it set off a series of inventions and technological developments, it combined industrial economy and agriculture. The first steam engine Rocket was made to transport cotton goods from Manchester to Liverpool. Cotton as a commodity fuelled the use of steam power, for transporting it. And it came in plenty from India. Not only was it cheaper, it was better, the best in fact. “English cotton thread was not only pricier than India, but too weak to be used on its own.” The quality was not because of superior technology but the centuries of knowledge in India about cotton, the book qualifies.
The author also attaches a lot of significance to the origin of this invention, as to why it happened in “an island nation with no special geographic resources.” The reason seems to be that England then gave a lot of encouragement and protection. “Before the eighteenth century, inventions were either created by those wealthy enough to do so as a leisure activity (or to patronise artisans to do so on their behalf), or they were kept secret for as long as possible. In England, a unique combination of law and circumstance gave artisans the incentive to invent, and in return obliged them to share the knowledge of their inventions.” It was a country where there was “a connection between invention, power, and wealth…”
Packed with anecdotes the book offers rich reading. There is this story of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, who when presented with an “unbreakable” glass cup, verified the claim and ordered the execution of the man to preserve the traditional value of gold. The famous Bramah & Co, the Locksmiths, had advertised in 1801, to award 200 guineas to any person who opened their one particular lock. It took fifty years for someone to win the prize. An American Locksmith succeeded after fifty hours of labour on it.
The history of the concept of patent is also interesting. Remarkable ideas had been given exclusive rights to the owner of the idea, for several centuries. “As a word, patent enters the lexicon in something approaching its modern meaning in 1449, when the mad King Henry VI signed a document known as a letter patent (so called because such letters were issued openly, rather than under seal; the phrase “patently obvious” is cognate) granting a glazier named John Utynam a twenty-year exclusive right to use his secret method for making the coloured glass to be used at the chapel at Eton College.”
Discussing industrial revolution and the British expansion, one cannot but mention the East India Company as this Asian colony of Britain fuelled a lot of developments there. Says the author: “the scale (of ambition) was enough to make twenty-first-century multinationals hide their heads in shame. From about 1608 until 1757, the Company merely dominated India’s economy; from 1757 until 1858, it ruled nearly half the subcontinent as sovereign, with its own tax collectors, police force, and army.”
The phenomenal growth of Britain, Rosen says is due to her enthusiastic inventors. Machinery Inventions fuelled demand for use of these, which pushed up production and the economy. He underlines this by pointing that India had known the spindle wheel for weaving in fifth or sixth CE. It came to Europe only around the 13th century. And yet, it is the mechanisation of the spindle that drove the textile industry to profit. In this context he discusses the comparative GDP of India, China, France, Netherlands and Britain in 1500, 1700 and 1820, highlighting the dramatic turnaround in the numbers – for the better for the European nations and for the worse for the Asian giants.
A thoroughly enjoyable book, though sometimes one feels overburdened with information. William Rosen definitely succeeds in convincing that steam engine is the most powerful idea in the world, next only to, as he says, the discovery of human mind on cultivating his own food. A very commendable book.
(Janathan Cape,20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA,)
