The country was a place where men worked from dawn to dark, and the laborer lived not in the sun, but in poverty and darkness. What aids there were to lighten labor were immemorial, like the mill, which was already ancient in Chaucer’s time. The Industrial Revolution began with such machines; the mill wrights were the engineers of the coming age. James Brindley of Staffords hire started himself made career in 1733 by working at mill wheels, at the age of seventeen, having been born poor in a village. Brindley’s improvements were practical: to sharpen and step up the performance of the water wheel as a machine. It was the first multi-purpose machine for the new industries.
在农村，人们从早到晚都得干活，劳动者并不是沐浴在阳光下，而是生活在贫困和黑暗之中。那些帮助减轻劳动的机械都不知从哪个年代就有了，比如磨坊，在乔叟的时代就已经是古老的了。而工业革命就是从这些机械开始的。修造磨坊的匠人就是开创新时代的工程师。斯塔福郡的詹姆斯布林德雷，出身于一个贫苦的农村家庭；1733年，他17岁，就着手改良磨坊的车轮，从而开始了他那自我奋斗的生涯。布林德雷所作的改良是很实际的：改善并加强水车的机械功能。这是为新工业提供的第一部多功能机器。
