"If you graph the history of economic growth, it looks a lot like a hockey stick laid on the ground with its blade sticking up. That is, economic growth was pretty flat for millennia, and then, around 1800, it points upward toward the sky. It's no secret that this inflection point where the stick's handle and blade meet was the Industrial Revolution."
"For Mokyr, a crucial reason why Britain became the epicenter of the Industrial Revolution in 1800 has to do with science and technology. True, many societies before Britain had seen scientific breakthroughs and technological progress. And sometimes, Mokyr finds, that led to some economic growth. However, no society saw its economy catapulted into a kind of sustained escape velocity away from stagnation before."
Economic growth remained nearly flat for millennia until the early 1800s, when the Industrial Revolution produced a sharp, sustained upward trajectory. Britain was the first to achieve that sustained escape from stagnation by embracing science, technology, and disruptive innovation and by integrating Enlightenment intellectual and political changes that accelerated technological progress. Many earlier societies experienced scientific breakthroughs and sporadic technological gains, but none sustained the catalytic combination of innovation adoption, institutional openness, and intellectual ferment that produced long-run growth. The result was monumental improvements in productivity, economic output, and standards of living.
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