" A shortage of wood had driven the English to take up burning coal. Digging ever deeper for coal, they found their mines flooding, driving them to invent engines to pump out the water. Raising water with fire, as they said—they liked the phrase—demonstrated that heat energy could be converted to mechanical energy. And if heat energy could pump water, could it not also turn wheels? It could, in mills, in factories, on the open road clumsily, on the railed road with unimaginable power and speed. And that changed almost everything, first in England, later in America and throughout the world. "

― Richard Rhodes , Energy: A Human History