Why was the international diffusion of technology relatively fast between 1820 and 1914?

A significant criterion of any industrial revolution is the diffusion of technology. However, it is not just gaining the technology that is significant but gaining foreign technologies and having the ability to implement and accept them. New technologies benefit industries by increasing output per capita this allows the industrialisation and stamps down its importance as a feature of modern economic growth. Technology has diffused largely between America and Western Europe. However pre-1914 only a few …

…can be seen after 1914 as more and more countries continue the development which will be based on the initial industrialised countries. Bibliography: Tom Kemp         Historical Patterns of Industrialisation         Longman Group (1978) A.G. Kenwood and A.L. Lougheed         Technological Diffusion and Industrialisation before 1914         Croon Helm/St. Martin's Press (1982) Gordon Boyce and Simon Ville         The Development of Modern Business         Palgrave (2002) A.G. Kenwood and A.L. Lougheed         Growth of the International Economy 1820-1980         George Allen & Unwin (1971)