Is there a book about technological/economic history that focuses not on how things were invented, but how they were scaled?
It's often pointed out that we focus more on invention even though improvement & scaling are equally important, but… who has actually written the latter?
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E.g., this book would have a chapter on electricity and it would gloss over Edison and Westinghouse in order to spend most of its time on Samuel Insull
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I know you know this book already, but maybe The Box is sort of about this? All the pieces were there but there was no uptake until the Vietnam War, and then that kicked off a really pent up cascade
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Yeah, although most of what I remember from having read that book a few years ago is Malcom McLean…
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No! There are so many fascinating stories to tell here if you do it right
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If you've not read The Shock of the Old you might like it. It's more or less about this, though with more of a focus on maintenance than scaling.
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