ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book highlights the rapid economic expansion that grew out of the legacy of innovation activity that came out of the nineteenth century. It develops how the end of the investment boom was a contributor to the severity of the great depression. The book describes the development of modern materials as enablers of technological development, especially of the second half of the twentieth century. It details the government's twentieth-century role in fostering invention and innovation. The book explores the relations between regulation and taxation on cyclical economic growth. It describes the development of the computer. The book covers the technology of light in the late twentieth century. It investigates the relationship between innovation and economic development in the late twentieth century and looks at certain similarities and dissimilarities between technology development patterns in the early and late twentieth century.
