The Long Way Back to Ourselves

6.9

The Industrial Revolution: Energy in Abundance

This episode measures the industrial revolution in efficiency numbers you can check against each other: Newcomen's 1712 steam engine converted about half a percent of coal's heat into work, while Watt's 1769 separate condenser raised that to about two percent. It draws on an 1842 report on child labor, including eight-year-old Sarah Gooder, a ventilation-door "trapper" who said she never dared sing in the dark. It tests explanations for why the breakthrough happened in Britain against cases like the Sambre-Meuse basin, which had the same factor but lagged. It also notes life expectancy rose only later, correcting the assumption that industrialization and longer lives arrived together.