The Industrial Age was a major systemic transition within the makeup of society, economy and technology infrastructure starting in Western Europe during the eighteenth century. The harnessing of the new technology of the combustion engine and energy source of fossil fuels allowed for the development of a new type of industrial economy built around mass production within large centralized organizations. During this time the modern nation-state became the social infrastructure behind the emergence of a new form of mass society and culture that spread globally during the twentieth century.
