Science, technology and the economy

Abstract

Until Newton's life and t imes, science had been primarily concerned with exploring nature as it is. However, in the early eighteenth century a few British engineers were exploring how to obtain power from nature, and how to transform one form of energy (e.g. thermal energy) into another (e.g. mechanical energy). For example, Thomas Newcomer's steam-driven beam engine of 1712, which had been designed to operate a pump for the removal of water from the Worcestershire coalmines, was improved by James Watt and adopted for a variety of industrial purposes after 1769. However, it was Joseph-Marie Jacquard, a Frenchman, who in c.1800 devised an apparatus with perforated cards to automate the silk-weaving looms in Lyons.