Mason, you may be interest to know about the parallels between David A. 
Wells & Schumpeter.  Schumpeter denigrates Wells in his History of 
Economic Analysis.  Anyway, this comes from my book, Railroading Economics:

Wells, anticipating Joseph Schumpeter's widely acclaimed idea of 
creative destruction (1950), wrote that the measure of the technical 
success of any invention was the extent to which it could destroy 
capital values (Wells 1889, p. 369).  He offered the example of "[t]he 
notable destruction or great impairment in the value of ships consequent 
upon the opening of the [Suez] Canal" (Wells 1889, p. 30).  He asserted 
that each generation of ships becomes obsolete within a decade. 
 Generalizing from the shipping industry, he concluded, "nothing marks 
more clearly the rate of material progress than the rapidity with which 
that which is old and has been considered wealth is destroyed by the 
results of new inventions and discoveries" (ibid., p. 31).  

... Wells claimed no originality for his work.  Instead, he credited his 
idea a friend:  

            by an economic law, which Mr. [Edward] Atkinson, of Boston, 
more than others, has recognized and formulated, all material progress 
is effected through the destruction of capital by invention and 
discovery, and the rapidity of such destruction is the best indicator of 
the rapidity of progress.  [Wells 1885, p. 146; see Atkinson 1889] 


Michael Perelman