By 18th century standards, they [Great Britain] were the freest, most dynamic, most willing to challenge tradition and authority. They had the highest wages and highest living standard, and probably the most engagement between the populace and the government of any country. Then the United States took those same qualities to the nth degree, and the British were suddenly appeared stodgy and tradition-bound.

I find her [Frances Trollope] simply delightful, even in her prejudices and cantankerousness. It is a gift to an author to find a funny, wry, perceptive contemporary observer to whom the subject matter seems almost as different and alien, and requiring as much struggling to understand, as it did to me.

For just a few dollars registration, you got temporary possession of a good piece of land. Live on it for five years, build a house, and farm it, and it was yours. What a brilliant economic stimulus!

John D. Rockefeller was certainly the first to create a consumer product that was sold literally throughout the entire world. Those blue 5-gallon cans showed up in some of the remotest parts of the world.

It's clear that North took some original steps in that direction, but Hall probably had the most complete approach and should get the most credit. But for Hall, unfortunately, the data are all impressionistic - what people said. None of his machinery survived. His patents were all lost in the Patent Office fire.

By 18th century standards, they [Great Britain] were the freest, most dynamic, most willing to challenge tradition and authority. They had the highest wages and highest living standard, and probably the most engagement between the populace and the government of any country. Then the United States took those same qualities to the nth degree, and the British were suddenly appeared stodgy and tradition-bound.

No specific technology. My guess is that it was the instinct always to go to maximum scale. Great Britain kept much more of a small shop mindset well into the twentieth century, for instance.