• the way to get ahead was commerce and other parts of the reward system (patents are one example)
• willingness to accept disruption of the old economy
  

• a large supply of skilled artisans (some of them clockmakers who left France because of religious persecution) who knew how to use machine tools
  
• they learned their skills by apprenticeship, not in schools
  
• Britain was not a leader in science, but its scientists were practically minded
• the top universities and government and military careers were closed to those who were not members of the church of England, and very difficult to get into for anyone from the middle class (you needed to have a lot of money)
  
• When England broke away from the Catholic Church under Henry VIII, they established their own state church, the Church of England, which in the US became the Episcopal church
• but there was a significant population of more radical Protestants, such as Methodists and Quakers, who were called nonconformists
  
• ideas of progress were common in England, following the tradition of Francis Bacon

national characteristics:

• Britain had good transportation and a relatively large unified market
• the market was large enough to justify investing in developing a new technology
• producers who neglected the latest technology were likely to lose out to their competition
• but other countries with strong markets did not have impressive technological innovation--there must be something else going on
• a stable government that made property rights a priority
• a patent system (first patent law in Britain was 1624)
• inventors registered a patent with the patent office
• gave the inventor a monopoly for 14 years
• the sense that inventors deserved reward was strong enough that the government gave grants to some inventors who had not been well rewarded
• patents were probably more important to big inventions than to small
• concentration of technological innovation (clustering)
  
• inventors were respected and famous
• chains of inspiration--one innovation leads to others

Resistance to technological change was less in England:

• those who opposed new technology did not get much support from the government, composed mostly of landowners with little sympathy for artisans
• guilds had more power in Europe to prohibit new technologies before 1815

Once one set of innovators become rich, do they resist the next steps in technological change

• who benefits from a new technology?  who pays the costs?  how much power does each group have?
• the British educational system never adapted to support technological creativity
• elite schools did not offer technical degrees
• pure science was valued much more highly than applied
• engineering education
  
• after 1850 skilled workers opposed technological change that would devalue their skills

Rapid technological progress is temporary in nature: Caldwell's law says that creative states are only super creative for a short time

• new elites resist further change
• what kind of economy is best for innovation (large or small companies, competitive or protected) varies
• society needs to keep changing as technology progresses
  
• is technological change now going to be the usual condition?