We burned wood. Then we burned coal. Then we burned oil. Then we burned atoms.
That is not a useful way of thinking of things. We have been burning oil and coal for a very very long time. Coal has been used in smiths to forge metal and oil to light lamps for 1000s of years.
It is not what we burnt that changed, it is what we did with the energy that changed things. Aka the steam engine was the real keystone technology in the industrial revolution. It was not the burning of oil that changed anything - but the internal combustion engine being put into cars.
someguy3@lemmy.world 1 month ago
If you didn’t have things to burn, then you couldn’t access certain advancements. Not nearly as easily anyway. We would have needed charcoal for steam engines. Without something liquid (and very energy dense) combustion engines would have been very hard.
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Treadles were the first source of power in the industrial revolution. Coal came way later.