But there was a problem. As demand for coal increased, coal miners had to dig deeper mines, which soon filled up with water, so getting more coal depended on building efficient pumps to drain mines. In England the incentives to solve this technological problem were greater than anywhere, so designing cheap, efficient pumps became a major goal for entrepreneurs and inventors. The combination of new science and widespread mechanical skills provided the intellectual background needed to solve the problem. Seventeenth-century scientists had begun to understand how atmospheric pressure worked, and
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