Quotes from William Rosen

The messy truth turns out to be that the innovative culture that blossomed in eighteenth-century Britain depended both on individuals looking out for their own interests, and on recognizing a national interest in innovation.

The Encyclopédie itself promised "to offer craftsmen the chance to learn35 from philosophers, and thereby hopefully to advance further toward perfection.

Many more learned their science in the most practical way: as apprentices to artisans who were more likely to be literate than ever before in history.

not being either philosophers17 to understand the reason, or mathematicians enough to calculate the powers and to proportion the parts, very luckily by accident found what they sought for.

The discovery of the power of injected water was luck; understanding and exploiting it was anything but. Newcomen and Calley replaced18 the accidental hole in the cylinder with an injection valve, and, ingeniously, attached it to the piston itself.

A bishop in Gaul could anoint a novitiate with oil from the olive orchards of Greece, bless the event with wine from the vineyards of Italy, and celebrate the sacrament with bread baked with the wheat of Africa while wearing a garment made by Syrian weavers from Chinese silk, all because of the ships.