"**Sails, going back to the Egypt of more than 5,000 years ago, were the first inanimate energy converters to make such links possibl**e, but only steam engines, aided by better means of navigation, brought the large-scale, low-cost, and reliable interchange—and only with the post-1900 diffusion of internal combustion engines (on land, on the ocean, and in the air) and the post-1955 adoption of solid-state (semiconductor) electronics has this process increased to unprecedented levels. **But these innovations intensified globalization; they didn’t launch it**. The process (unlike its post-1985 prominence) is not a new phenomenon, and in this chapter I will trace both the timing and the extent of its past waves—and the limits of their eventual reach and intensity." ([Location 2130](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08SGC3TD3&location=2130)) --- **Tags** -- [[quotes]], [[globalisation]], [[innovation]], **Source** -- [[202412030828 - B - How the World Really Works]]