ABSTRACT
In 1798, the radical philosopher and supporter of the French Revolution William Godwin (who was also the infant Mary Shelley’s father) imagined a future filled with machinery.
At present, to pull down a tree, to cut a canal, to navigate a vessel, require the labour of many. Will they always require the labour of many? When we recollect the complicated machines of human contrivance, various sorts of mills, of weaving engines, steam engines, are we not astonished at the compendium of labour they produce? Who shall say where this species of improvement must stop?
