Among historians of capitalism and technology, the process of engineering--a method of repeatable creation derived from the 17th-century discovery and exploitation of the scientific method--gets much of the credit for our world.
Preserved primarily in Jiangsu province in eastern China, the method comprises more than a hundred procedures, including manufacturing looms, drafting patterns, the creation of jacquard cards for programming weaving patterns, dressing the loom and the many stages of weaving itself.