Published 2009-08-01
“…He also shows how sophisticated knowledge of this novel, modern scientific type stood squarely athwart such more commonsensical notions as used to mark rival efforts, be it earlier in Europe or in China or elsewhere, to come to grips with the phenomena of nature. The
Newcomen engine further serves to show how the 18th century provided something like an ‘incubation period’, in course of which mostly British artisans of a wholly novel type learned by trial and error to bridge the vast gap between the theoretical solution to some practical problem and a truly viable, truly practicable solution.…”
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