Talks about history of coal, iron and steam and the "virtuous cycle" that happened between them in Great Britain from 1200 onwards. There are some pretty inter

Talks about history of coal, iron and steam and the "virtuous cycle" that happened between them in Great Britain from 1200 onwards. There are some pretty interesting snippets: """ ... there is another possible explanation for the name – that it was called sea coal because it arrived into London by sea from the North. ... """ """ ... this would provide a tidy explanation for why the engine developed in Britain and nowhere else – no other place was exploiting coal as a fuel source nearly so intensively, and so no other place had access to the cheap fuel that made a first-generation steam engine worthwhile. """ """ The puddling process, developed in Britain in the 1780s, removed this last bottleneck. A puddling furnace turned cast iron into wrought simply by applying heat and stirring. This allowed the mass production of wrought iron, using coal as fuel """ Good read!