If all measures of human advancement in the last hundred centuries were plotted
on a graph, they would show an almost perfectly flat line - until the eighteenth
century, when the Industrial 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 tells the story of the men
responsible for the Industrial Revolution and the machine that drove it - the
steam engine. In the process, he tackles the question that has obsessed historians
ever since: What made 18th-century Britain such fertile soil for inventors?
Rosen's answer focuses on a simple notion that had become enshrined in British law
the century before: that people had the right to own and profit from their ideas.

The result was a period of frantic innovation revolving particularly around the
promise of steam power. Rosen traces the steam engine's history from its early
days as a clumsy but sturdy machine, to its coming-of-age driving the wheels of
mills and factories, to its maturity as a transporter for people and freight by
rail and by sea. Along the way, we enter the minds of such inventors as Thomas
Newcomen and James Watt; scientists, including Robert Boyle and Joseph Black; and
philosophers John Locke and Adam Smith - all of whose insights, tenacity, and
ideas transformed first a nation and then the world.

Rosen is a masterly storyteller with a keen eye for the "aha!" moments of
invention and a gift for clear and entertaining explanations of science. The Most
Powerful Idea in the World will appeal to anyone who is fascinated with history,
science, and the hows and whys of innovation itself.

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