The most notable technological innovation of the Midlands Enlightenment, however, was the 1775 development by James Watt and Matthew Boulton of the industrial steam engine, which incorporated four separate technical advances to allow it to cheaply and efficiently generate the rotary motion needed to power manufacturing machinery. Freeing the productive potential of society from the limited capacity of hand, water and animal power, this was arguably the pivotal development of the entire industrial revolution, without which the spectacular increases in economic activity of the subsequent century would have been impossible.