It is well to observe the force and virtue and consequence of discoveries, and these are to be seen nowhere more conspicuously than in those three which were unknown to the ancients, and of which the origins, though recent, are obscure and inglorious; namely, printing, gunpowder, and the mariner's needle [compass]…these three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world.

Novum Organum (1620) bk. 1, Aphorism 129 (translated by J. Spedding)