the world’s first pumped storage stations were also built.

Willis Haviland Carrier (1876–1950) designed his first air conditioning system in 1902 after he realized that air could be dried by saturating it with chilled

less than 15% of space required for garaging as opposed to stabling, and

Even more germane for any attempt to delimit the Age of Synergy is the fact that some historians have questioned the very concept of its necessary precursor, the Industrial Revolution.

chemical wood pulping process (patented in 1867) opened the way for mass production of inexpensive paper. And by 1867 Alfred Nobel was ready to produce his dynamite,

The highest conversion efficiencies of modern fossil-fueled plants are now up to 40–43% (compared to just 4% in 1890) and can be raised further by resorting to combined generation cycles.

after millennia of dependence on just three basic sources of energy—combustion of fuels (biomass or fossil), animate metabolism (human and animal muscles), and conversion of indirect solar flows (water and wind)—everything changed in the course of a single decade.

Extraordinarily large productivity gains were behind the car’s rapid mass penetration. Data from Ford cost books show that 151 hours was needed to make a car in 1906, 39 in 1914, and 37 in 1924 (Ling 1990)—but productivity was rising in every sector of the economy.

initially slow growth accelerates and then slows down as it approaches a limit and eventually stops.