One of the reasons for the rise of the US was the WW2. After the 1930s, the US economy was nothing special, but when the US entered the war, they had
the need for more aircrafts, ships, weapons, etc. With that needs also come the need for better and faster ways of producing all those things and the
need for better and faster ways of producing the materials used in the making of those things.
Curiously, when people talk about the advancements in technology they do not talk about the thing that has advanced more, in my opinion, chemicals.
Just look around you, almost all things we can see are only possible because the advances in chemistry.
Just look at you computer and think of all the materials that did not existed 50 years ago.
All modern plastics are very different from the first.
The coating of the monitor, both inside and outside.
If you have an LCD display, then all the surface of the display has a coating of liquid molecules that change position when an electrical charge is
applied.
The motherboard is made from a material that is very different from the first used in similar uses, bakelite.
The chips on the motherboard only work because of the ceramic casing that dissipates the heat and gives strength.
Also, if more people knew how things work more people could see that such things as the transistor are nothing special. The way it was invented may
not be truly known, but they only do the same as the old valves, and most of the times, one valve could do the work of several transistors.
And if you think of old things that we not use anymore, are they really much more simple than today's things?
Can you explain how they invented photography? Radio? Sound recording? Batteries? Clocks?
The fact that they are old does not mean that everybody today can make or even understand how it works.
Never underestimate that thing between your ears, and I mean the brain.