Ottoman rule in the 15th century. As in the other Balkan nations, the scarce arable land fell into the hands of Turkish landowners, who did not concern themselves with modernising agriculture. The successful

century, and 1805 saw the commissioning of the first steam engine in St. Petersburg. On the other hand, the boom in iron production trailed off in the mid-19th century, and the government attempted to

few factories, which mostly produced agricultural products such as flour and sugar, were in foreign hands, as were the railways. And the agricultural sector was still using the inefficient methods of past

mass-produced, industry as a whole expanded only slowly. Many high-value goods were still made by hand, as there was no shortage of labour; entrepreneurs could pay low wages, particularly as many people

play any significant role in economic development: although Finland’s farmers were never serfs, the handful of owners of large, profitable estates long dominated an overwhelming majority of day labourers and

"Société Vielle Montagne" had begun producing zinc in 1837. In the coal mines, which were largely in the hands of French bankers, production rose steadily, but at the same time the area - especially the "Borinage"

was introduced into Belgian coalmines and, after the First World War, into the pits along the Ruhr. Hand labour underground, which had continued almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, was gradually coming

chemical products such as seeds, fertilisers and pesticides, they also became more dependent on a handful of large international companies with strong research capabilities. The environmental and health

process. Now the only hurdle left was the problem of setting the type, which was traditionally done by hand. This was solved in the USA in 1884 by a watchmaker named Ottmar Mergenthaler whose Lynotype machine

invented by John Kay in 1733. This meant that weavers no longer pulled through the warp threads by hand, but shot them through with the help of a cable. Weaving was thus accelerated to such an extent that

guns and pistols which looked alike, but in the final assembly every single part had to be fitted by hand. Now gun makers from North America, like Samuel Colt, developed high-precision machine tools, which