Steam power meant they were designed around one great power system, complete with belts and pulleys that snaked through the building.

蒸汽动力意味着它们是围绕着一个巨大的动力系统设计的，由传送带和滑轮蜿蜒流通整个大楼来产生动力。

Two hundred years ago steam power brought workers to factories where they could use new machines.

两百年前，蒸汽动力把工人带进工厂，他们在那里使用新型机器从事生产。

In the more recent past, a French inventor named Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot, built a steam powered car like contraption around 1769.

在近些时候，一位名叫尼古拉斯·约瑟夫·库格诺的法国发明家在1769年左右制造了一辆像是蒸汽动力汽车的新奇装置。

The General Grant was rigged with three masts, giving a large capacity for sails, and thus materially aiding the steam power.

格兰特将军号装有三个大帆。帆面很宽，有力地协助发动机加快航行速度。

And there was a wide range of methods used to drive them, too – pulleys, water and steam power, electricity and so on.

当时电梯的驱动方式有很多种，包括滑轮驱动、水力和蒸汽驱动、电力驱动等等。

To give you context, the change that happened in productivity when an American plant added steam power in the 1800s was about 25% in productivity.

给你提供一点背景，19 世纪美国一家工厂增加蒸汽动力后，生产力只提高了约 25%。

As necessary to mechanical industry as steel and steam power was the great market, spread over a wide and diversified area and knit together by efficient means of transportation.

——与钢铁和蒸汽动力一样对机械工业来说必不可少的是巨大的市场，分布在广泛和多样化的地区， 并通过高效的交通工具连接在一起。

There is another man to talk about. He stayed in prison for a long time. I am not crazy! He is the one who invented steam power, but he could not be recognized as a great man in his days.

说道这里，还有一个人需要提一下。他久居铁窗之内，高喊着“我不是疯子！”他便是发明蒸汽动力的人，但在那个时代他是不被人们认可的。