> These machines brought us from poverty and misery unimaginable today. This has to be it. My ancestors quality of life skyrocketed somewhere in the early to m

> These machines brought us from poverty and misery unimaginable today. This has to be it. My ancestors quality of life skyrocketed somewhere in the early to mid 20th century. Before that, they were mostly peasants and journeymen, for hundreds if not thousands of years. Ironically, machines gave millions of people the chance to express their humanity, mostly via social mobility and rights we now take for granted.