ABSTRACT
This chapter provides characterizations of the early, late, and very-late waves of industrialization. Economic historians tell us that industrialization has shaped, and in turn has been shaped by, the concomitant waves of economic globalization. The engine of industrialization, early or late, is the production and diffusion especially of general-purpose technologies. The "standard model" of catchup industrialization under IR2 had four key economic attributes: a unified national market, universal primary education, development banking, and activist industrial policy. Informal mental models of industrialization, on the other hand, can draw on the big ideas of high development theory. The science revolution of 1860–1930 fueled the catchup process by producing the steam turbine and cheap steel, the electric motor, and the internal combustion engine. Electricity, the internal combustion engine, commercial air transportation, and the computer are the more notable innovations that are unlikely to find parallels in the ongoing digital revolution in terms of economic impact.
