It seems, therefore, that Lohneyss' "old miners" were those described by Agricola, and that the mine-hauling machinery used in central European mines changed in the century after him far more than has been recognized.[20] This thesis may further cast some light on other technological questions. The connection between the urgency of the problem of mine drainage in England, and the invention of the steam engine, has often been suggested.[21] Perhaps the "backwardness" of Germany in steam-engine experimentation, and later in the introduction of the Newcomen engine, was to some extent due to the adequacy of existing machinery to meet the problem of mine flooding, for it is not clear that this problem existed on the continent.[22] [Illustration: Figure 8.--THE WATERWORKS AT MARLY-LE-ROI, ON THE SEINE RIVER, BUILT IN 1684 TO SUPPLY THE FOUNTAINS AT THE ROYAL PALACE AT VERSAILLES. From a print by de Fer, 1705. (_Smithsonian photo 45593._)] A comparison of the techniques described by Agricola with those of a century later suggests that this was a century of significant progress in that earlier industrial revolution described by Mumford as his "Eotechnic phase," characterized by "the diminished use of human beings as prime movers, and the separation of the production of energy from its application and immediate control."[23] Footnotes: [1] W. B. Parsons, _Engineers and engineering in the Renaissance_, Baltimore, 1939. Abraham Wolf, _A history of science, technology, and philosophy in the 16th and 17th centuries_, New York, 1935; and _A history of science, technology and philosophy in the eighteenth century_, London, 1938. C. M. Bromehead, "Mining and quarrying to the seventeenth century," in Charles Singer and others, _A history of technology_, vol. 2, Oxford, 1956. [2] According to Parsons (_op. cit._, footnote 1, p. 629) the introduction of machinery worked by animals and falling water, "radical improvements" of the 15th century, fixed the development of the art "until the eighteenth, and, in some respects, even well into the nineteenth century." Wolf in his _History of science ... in the eighteenth century_ (p. 629, see footnote 1) agrees, saying that "apart from [the steam engine] mining methods remained [during the 18th century] essentially similar to those described in Agricola's _De re metallica_." Bromehead (_op. cit._, footnote 1, p. 22), in referring to the date 1673 also sees "no appreciable change in methods of mining since Agricola." [3] Parsons, _op. cit._ (footnote 1), p. 179. T. A. Rickard, _Man and metals_, New York, 1932, vol. 2, pp. 519-521. [4] Heinrich Bechtel, _Wirtschaftstil des deutschen Spaetmittelalters_, Munich, 1930, pp. 202-203. Bechtel calls this one of the most revolutionary industrial developments of the middle ages.