The development of the steam engine in eighteenth-century Britain is often portrayed as the brainchild of a few brilliant inventors. Recent historians of technology stress instead that the engine emerged from incremental improvements made by many practitioners — engineers, mine operators, and skilled craftsmen — over decades. Reading the steam engine as an individual achievement, they argue, obscures the cumulative collaborative work that made it possible.
Which choice best states the main idea of the text?
- A
Steam power was unimportant.
- B
Britain led all eighteenth-century invention.
- Ccheck_circle
Recent histories portray the steam engine as the product of many incremental contributions, not just a few inventors.
- D
James Watt single-handedly invented the steam engine.
Explanation
The passage's central claim is the collaborative cumulative model — B. A is the view revised; C and D are not the focus.