ABSTRACT
The machine-based technology which emerged in the nineteenth century owed relatively little to scientific knowledge. Technical progress in metallurgy, an activity which is fundamental to man’s tool-making and tool-using abilities, has always been based upon essentially trial-and-error procedures. These procedures did permit a slow and stumbling progress. The advance of metallurgical technique ahead of scientific understanding culminated with Bessemer’s report of his strikingly successful steelmaking experiments to the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in August 1856. The effect of the knowledge revolution upon agriculture has been, in many ways, strikingly similar to its effect upon materials. The long-term rise in agricultural productivity was dramatically accelerated in the years after World War II. A strong inducement to mechanization was imparted by the growing demand for labor in the non-farm sectors during the war, which raised wages and led to a large-scale movement of labor out of agriculture.
