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"Technological change is a prime mover in the course of economic development. Historically, invention and innovation have led the process of growth in advanced countries. Imitation by less advanced countries affords them a short cut to higher levels of living."

Actually there can be no constructive thinking respecting history apart from culture, Since history is always the history of a people, it is reasonable that the historical event-a political movement, a style of art, a technological innovation, a scientific discovery -should be prepared by the ambience of culture. It is only possible to speak, therefore, with generality of the contours of culture, but not to fix them with finality, for culture is the latency of history, the actuality given and the possibilities implicit but unrealized.

Recent studies into technological change in the American economy have stressed the importance of economic conditions that operate through the market mechanism on both the direction of the inventive activity which has generally provided the basis for this change and on the rate at which newly developed techniques are commercially adopted. Schmookler has argued the former point persuasively in several articles, while North, for the latter, has asserted that "productivity changes stemming from technological innovations are, in part at least, a nearly automatic response to successful expansion of industries in an acquisitive society under competitive market conditions." With respect to American agriculture in the nineteenth century, our knowledge of the level of investment which incorporated new production techniques, and of the effects these techniques had on productivity and output has been greatly enhanced by the recent work of Kendrick, Gallman, and Towne and Rasmussen. Our account of inventive activity in agriculture, however, is still limited to mentioning and tracing through the effects of some of the more famous inventions in this field and to fragmentary patent citations. Accessibility to patent statistics since 1837 now makes possible a fuller treatment of agricultural inventions. In Part II of this paper I present a description of the level and composition of agricultural inventions between 1837–1890. In Part III, I attempt to test the importance of certain market conditions as determinants of this inventive activity.

The process of technical change from the economist's viewpoint may be broken down into three phases: invention, innovation, and diffusion. Invention, or the increase in technological possibilities, is the discovery or perception of new configurations of technical processes or principles that alter the array of possible production functions. An innovation consists of using any given production function for the "first" time. Diffusion is basically imitative and involves the gradual replacement of old methods by the new. One example will suffice to illustrate these distinctions. The invention of the automatic bottle machine consisted of the conception, experimentation, and model-building activities of Michael J. Owens; the pioneering efforts of the entrepreneurs at Toledo, Ohio, to demonstrate that the new production function was both practical and economically feasible constituted the innovational phase; and the gradual replacement of hand-blown and semiautomatic machine methods by the new process in both American and foreign markets involved diffusion.

The staple approach to the study of economic history is primarily a Canadian innovation; indeed, it is Canada's most distinctive contribution to political economy. It is undeveloped in any explicit form in most countries where the export sector of the economy is or was dominant. The specific terminology—staple or staples approach, or theory, or thesis—is Canadian, and the persistence with which the theory has been applied by Canadian social scientists and historians is unique.The leading innovator was the late Harold Innis in his brilliant pioneering historical studies, notably of the cod fisheries and the fur trade; others tilled the same vineyard3 but it is his work that has stamped the "school." His concern was with the general impact on the economy and society of staple production. His method was to cast the net widely. The staple approach became a unifying theme of diffuse application rather than an analytic tool fashioned for specific uses. There was little attempt to limit its application by the use of an explicit framework. Methodologically, Innis' staple approach was more technological history writ large than a theory of economic growth in the conventional sense.