Oh… that’s interesting. I’ve never thought of that aspect of why maybe the industrial Revolution took off in Europe but not China. Lenses allowed the developmen

Oh… that’s interesting. I’ve never thought of that aspect of why maybe the industrial Revolution took off in Europe but not China. Lenses allowed the development of the telescope, reading glasses (extending working years of scientists and engineers, etc, enabling finer work on clockwork mechanisms), the sextant, the barometer (and thus the study of vacuum that led to steam engines), and the microscope. All that predated the industrial Revolution, laying the scientific groundwork for all that followed. (Obviously things like that are multi-causal, but I had never heard that idea before, that the amazing porcelain of China kind of held back the development of glass and all its many, many applications.)