Steam powered traction engines. Although these vehicles seem large, heavy and difficult to manoeuvre from a modern viewpoint, they revolutionized agriculture and road haulage when they were introduced.
The Industrial Revolution was the most important thing to happen in human history since the time when animals and plants were domesticated.
Before the Industrial Revolution happened, each generation of people produced a roughly similar amount of products to their predecessors and overall economic wealth was fairly stagnant. After industrialization, production began to grow quickly and it generally continued to grow each year.
