Answer:
True.
Yes, they created the foundation for what was to come and prosper.
What were the important inventions during the Industrial Revolution, and what were their significance?
All the inventions. Everything we use today. The list is REALLY long. Instead, here are some of the key innovations or milestones, like mechanical drafting.
OP might not realize this, but prior to the Industrial Revolution, everything was hand made, using at most wooden contraptions with few hand made metal parts, powered by human, animal or wind/water.
Each. Page. Of. A. Book. Was. Printed. One. At. A Time.
Everything was unique in that way. Parts for things could be made nearly identical- but not fully interchangeable- the level of accuracy required was not available on a mass scale. There were no national agencies tasked with setting fabrication standards. One did not go to the store for some wood screws, one had a bespoke set made at one’s foundry on one’s estate…By one’s iron smithy.
So, in order to kill people faster, cheaper, and all around more efficiently, gun makers went looking for “The Interchangeable Part” in the early 1700’s.
Along the way, the need for ever more precise “Machining, Measuring and Metering” evolved. The metal lathe & vertical mill, micrometer, accurate thermometers and the thermocouple. Etc. To machine things accurately on the new lathe, we needed to be able to measure things evermore precisely.
Simultaneously, the sciences of Metallurgy and Mechanical & Civil Engineering developed into full blown fields of study along with much more accurate Geoengineering and Surveying. Think The Canal Age. There was also an explosion of the establishment of University.
Two thirds into the revolution, mass production of steel was invented and the inevitable internal combustion engine soon followed. World War One marked the end of humanity’s agrarian beginnings and our entry into the Modern Age with flight, weapons of mass destruction, mass media, and mass sanitation. And germ theory. And vaccines.
All of which would have been pretty much impossible without interchangeable parts.