[upwardbound]

Also you can't make fire underwater (setting aside elements like potassium that aren't readily obtainable in large quantities the way wood and coal are). This makes it a lot more difficult for an aquatic species to have an Industrial Revolution. I guess in theory you could burn aquatic plants like kelp, and burn them at the surface, building 2D floating factories at the surface of the ocean, but this sounds vastly more difficult than what we humans did. You'd have trouble finding enough kelp to burn, and the waves of the ocean would mean that your factories couldn't be on a stable foundation. I suspect you'd also have trouble making a spark for ignition, and you might have to be very patient and wait for a lightning strike or something.

[aszantu]

I wonder if we could help them by giving them artificial hands like the ones they are testing with apes