Comment by atombender

A fun fact is that the steam engine in England was originally developed to pump water out of mines, where flooding was a frequent problem.

Technological revolutions aren't just driven by opportunity, but also practical need; mine draining was the first "killer app" for steam that let it catch on because it solved a real problem and allowed it to be proven as a concept.

But England was also in a unique position in other ways: It had natural resources like coal and iron, as well as rivers to efficiently transport these, a stable government, and relatively high wages compared to mainland Europe, which served as an incentive to replace workers (and animals) with machines. All of these stars aligned at the right time for steam to become a viable entrepreneurial project, which simply wasn't the case in, say, Germany or France.