Was technology used for the first time with the primary motive of cutting labor’s cost?

It’s a common knowledge that need is the mother of invention. We invent something when there arise some kind of need, some kind of requirement. And yes, technology was needed to introduce modernity in human civilization. Now the question remains what it was needed for.

It was in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century when the fate of the world was changed by the introduction of technology through “Industrial Revolution” that started in Britain. It is a familiar fact that this revolution had a major role to play in the British colonization project.

Now the economic historians have come up with certain hypotheses which explains why “Industrial Revolution” started in Britain. An American economist proposes that it was the high wage of labor that encouraged the British to adopt technology ad save the cost of labor. This hypothesis however has been refuted by other economists and researchers on various grounds.

Other researchers believe that it can’t be so as the owners had the option of getting cheap labor in women and children. We also know that importing slaves from the colonies was also a common activity in the Victorian Britain.

The technology thus, was not born with the motive of cutting labor’s cost as there were quite a lot of options to choose from in terms of labor. Also, the progress that science and technology has made since eighteenth century globally just cannot have such a limited reason.