It seems folly to try to estimate the timing of the industrial revolution based on measured output. It takes time to build a factory, especially one that's unl

It seems folly to try to estimate the timing of the industrial revolution based on measured output. It takes time to build a factory, especially one that's unlike any that has ever been built before. Then after you get it working, it takes time for people to learn all the little idiosyncrasies necessary to get the most out of it. Indeed, adopting radically new technologies might in the short term lead to substantial losses in productivity. But substantially, the way things were made changed. Some industries associated with the revolution saw enormous growth of course, but everything changed. Wooden tools were replaced by metal, labor was concentrated and mechanized, backwater towns became bustling cities while old centers of commerce declined. Normalizing growth rate per capita is dumb when part of the revolution is the change in population. It also seems silly to hold the growth of that period against the standard of today. Innovation builds upon innovation, and the modern growth rate is the product of billions of people educated in modern sciences and technical disciplines. China can achieve 8% growth rates today because it can utilize the advances of others. If on the other hand you compare growth rates to pre-industrial societies, 2% is really impressive. Prior to the industrial revolution, growth was barely existent, GDP per capita was as likely to go down as up. In the first world from 1750 to 1850, GDP per capita nearly doubled, during the same period in the third world it decreased by 10%. The UK specifically saw a 61% GDP per capita increase from 1830 to 1860, compared to an average for western Europe of 29%. The industrial revolution marks the beginning of consistently positive growth, a major qualitative shift. We observe in reality exactly what we'd expect to see: a major change in how things are done in the late 1700s followed by rapid economic growth compared to neighbors who did not make those changes over the subsequent decades.