The 1690s: a bank, a steam pump and a travelling tsar

The Bank of England was founded in 1694 to lend money to the government. It soon became the centre of Britain's financial system and a model for central banks around the world. Paper banknotes grew more common as trust in the bank increased.

Mines in England were flooding as they went deeper. In 1698, Thomas Savery patented a machine that used steam to pump out water, which he called 'the miner's friend'. It was not very efficient, but it showed that steam could do useful work.

In 1697 and 1698, Russia's Tsar Peter the Great travelled through Western Europe with a large delegation known as the Grand Embassy. He worked in shipyards in the Netherlands and England, studied science and technology, and returned home determined to modernise Russia.

In 1690, the Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens published his Treatise on Light, describing light as a wave. His ideas competed with Newton's view of light as particles, a debate that physics would only settle in the twentieth century, when light was shown to behave as both.