"Tweakers" (God what a horrible name, and I thought "hacker" was kind of bad for makers.) might have contributed to the industrial revolution in England.

Then again, the relative prices of labor vs energy at the time probably played a greater role: http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/3570

It made sense to invest in labor saving machinery because you actually saved money. In other places, labor was cheaper and energy more expensive, so it just wasn't economical to spend on industrial machinery.