No, that's true. But to add detail, this is how things kicked off in America particularly, in the late 1700s or early 1800's. The first American mills that coul

No, that's true. But to add detail, this is how things kicked off in America particularly, in the late 1700s or early 1800's. The first American mills that could mass produce stuff were located along streams that used the turning of the waterwheels to do their work. This comes from the book Behemoth: The History of the Factory by Freeman (edit: added this later). One of the main characters is a man named Richard Arkwright. You can see that his biography broadly tracks what I'm describing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Arkwright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Arkwright You could call this line the 'origin story' of the Industrial Revolution - the invention of the Spinning Frame (a water powered automation machine, if you will). > Arkwright and John Smalley of Preston set up a small horse-driven factory at Nottingham. To obtain capital for expansion, Arkwright formed a partnership with Jedediah Strutt and Samuel Need, wealthy nonconformist hosiery manufacturers. In 1771, the partners built the world's first water-powered mill at Cromford, which covered both carding and spinning operations and employed 200 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Arkwright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Arkwright