Li's machine

Lee’s machine is a knitting device associated with William Lee, remembered in the book through his meeting with Queen Elizabeth I. The machine’s brief appearance points beyond invention itself: whether technology can contribute to economic change depends on the institutions that shape incentives, access, and the distribution of power.

Identity and Historical Reference

The book identifies the machine through the story of William Lee and his meeting with Queen Elizabeth I, directing readers to an account of that episode. It supplies no technical description of the device, its operation, or the terms of the meeting, so the machine is presented as a historical reference rather than examined as an object in detail.

Invention and Institutions

The reference appears in a discussion of the causes of the Industrial Revolution and the institutional arguments behind it. The surrounding account distinguishes technological change from the wider conditions that allow societies to use and benefit from it. Economic institutions shape incentives to become educated, save and invest, innovate, and adopt new technologies; political institutions determine how those economic rules are made and enforced, and how far citizens can influence political power.

That framework makes Lee’s machine more than an isolated emblem of ingenuity. An invention’s presence does not by itself explain broad prosperity: the consequences depend on the institutions through which people can develop, adopt, and make use of technology. The book’s citation establishes the machine as part of this historical discussion, without making a specific claim about what happened to Lee or his device after the meeting.

Significance in the Book’s Argument

The machine’s reference sits within a broader contrast between inclusive and extractive institutions. Inclusive political institutions distribute power broadly, while extractive institutions concentrate it among a narrow elite and can sustain economic arrangements that restrict entry, weaken markets, and direct resources toward the few. The account argues that political and economic institutions reinforce one another: those who benefit from extractive arrangements can use their resources to defend their political dominance, while inclusive institutions can challenge economic arrangements that exclude the many.

Across the book’s comparisons, technology’s effects are therefore inseparable from institutional context. European commercial and colonial expansion, for example, helped create conditions for more inclusive institutions in Britain while imposing or strengthening extractive systems elsewhere, sometimes destroying existing commercial activity and obstructing industrialization. Against that larger argument, Lee’s machine marks the meeting point between invention and the political-economic structures that determine whether technological change can become a source of widely shared prosperity.