ABSTRACT
In what follows I have simply tried to make some general observations on the question of technological change and diffusion based on the experience of Europe, and, in a minor degree, of the United States in the nineteenth century. Two aspects of the subject have received most attention. One is the processes by which countries learned about and took up new ideas, and the other – which is not really a separate issue at all – is the vexed question of the nature of particular technologies and their relevance or adaptation for countries other than these in which they originated. I have not pursued the wider question of the origin of inventions but rather I have examined what part different factors have played in the emergence of new technologies or in the change of factor-mix within given technologies, and what happened when the question arose of their adoption in circumstances where the economic environment was quite different.
