Energy and Industry Machines to enhance and increase the power of the human body have been used since remotest antiquity. The simplest of machines, the lever, seems to have emerged independently in many different cultures, millenia ago. Simple systems of pulleys and cranks have been used all around the world for many centuries. Along the centuries machines progressively became more sophisticated, in a process of technological development that has been unstopable. In Europe, in the nineteenth century, the introduction of the steam engine in factories led to radical changes and to exponential increases in productivity. The development of machines was so dramatic in Europe and the growth of their use in industry had such radical consequences that historians have labelled this an "Industrial Revolution". Machines were an indispensable element in the economic development of Europe and the world but their impact has been much more profound than merely the economic one. Consider...