The year 1776 appeared in the first movie when Doc Brown tapped in the US Declaration of Independence as an example date.
In the same year, a Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith published his works known as the Wealth of Nations, tying in with the birth of the Industrial Revolution a decade or so before. Whilst containing many other “economic” principles and concepts, one of which is also highlighted below (for good reason), the Wealth of Nations starts by discussing specialisation and division of labour and how it can apply in a pin factory, which includes the making of pinheads as part of the whole process.
Specialisation and division of labour is one of the core principles through which economies can experience exponential growth, especially when “money” is brought into the equation to help “oil the wheels” of industry. Note at this stage that that is, or was, the true purpose of money, which we’ll come to later.
Interestingly, in relatively the same breath, Smith also highlighted (using now outdated words of the time so here paraphrasing) that if specialisation and division of labour was overdone, then the spirit of humankind will come to harm. Karl Marx also identified this same problem decades later, which he termed “alienation”. Amazing how these founding fathers of capitalism and communism respectively recognised the same core truth, and yet present day have effectively been wholly ignored as to the warnings given. In a society, a mass ego, which claims to be intellectually advanced, there is absolutely no excuse for such an oversight. There is a reason, but this reason is no excuse for not acting in a good and proper fashion.
The industrial revolution was a natural evolution, and has much to do with the development of the time machine. We will no doubt come back to this to see how it fits into the whole time travel equation.
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