Science and the Steam Engine

The detailed history of the steam engine, the railroad, the textile mill, the iron ship, could be written without more than a passing reference to the scientific work of the period. For these devices were made possible largely by the method of empirical practice, by trial and selection.... And although all these inventions would have been the better for science, they came into existence, for the most part without its direct aid. It was the practical men in the mines, the factories, the machine shops and the clockmakers' shops and the locksmith's shops or the curious amateurs with a turn for manipulating materials and imagining new processes, who made them possible.'