Adam Smith was smart enough to predict the Industrial Revolution — 100 years before it started. At the time he published his treatise on economics (a term, by the way, that did not even exist in his time), England was still in the midst of an agricultural revolution a marked increase in the output of the food from farms enabled the population to greatly expand. A new class of laborers appeared: those who did not have land to grow their own food but exchanged their talents, for instance in garment making or ironsmithing, for it. Smith noticed the changes, predicting they would vastly improve living conditions in the country.

On this day, March 9, in 1776, Adam Smith published his magnum opus, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Among other points, he argued that increased productivity that would come from worker specialization, and that governments should interfere as little as possible in the market — the foundation of laissez-faire capitalism.

Much of modern economic theory is indebted to Smith, and his book continues to be required reading in every general level economics course. Most of its ideas – on the operation of the markets, on the division of labor, on the self-interested trade among men – remain widely held to this day.