ABSTRACT
T H E question as to whether steam power alone was responsible for the industrial revolution was debated even before the series of profound economic changes of the last half of the eighteenth century began to be known by that term. It is now generally recognised that the factory system, together with all the forces which moulded the modern industrial age, originated before and apart from the application of steam power to industry. At the same time it is admitted that without the existence of some such agent neither the rapidity nor the completeness of the development of the modern economic system can be explained. The evolution of the steam engine occupies, therefore, an important place both technically and economically in all discussions of the history of the industrial revolution.
