Industrial Revolution

CONTENTS

1. England: Birthplace of the Industrial Revolution

2. Impact of Steam Power
3. Transportation During the Industrial Revolution
4. Communication and Banking in the Industrial Revolution
5. Working Conditions
6. The Industrial Revolution in the United States
7. Photo Galleries
8. Sources
The Industrial Revolution marked a period of development in the latter half of the 18th century
that transformed largely rural, agrarian societies in Europe and America into industrialized,
urban ones.

Goods that had once been painstakingly crafted by hand started to be produced in mass
quantities by machines in factories, thanks to the introduction of new machines and techniques
in textiles, iron making and other industries.

Fueled by the game-changing use of steam power, the Industrial Revolution began in Britain
and spread to the rest of the world, including the United States, by the 1830s and ‘40s. Modern
historians often refer to this period as the First Industrial Revolution, to set it apart from
a second period of industrialization that took place from the late 19th to early 20th centuries
and saw rapid advances in the steel, electric and automobile industries.

England: Birthplace of the Industrial Revolution

Thanks in part to its damp climate, ideal for raising sheep, Britain had a long history of
producing textiles like wool, linen and cotton. But prior to the Industrial Revolution, the British
textile business was a true “cottage industry,” with the work performed in small workshops or
even homes by individual spinners, weavers and dyers.

Starting in the mid-18th century, innovations like the flying shuttle, the spinning jenny, the
water frame and the power loom made weaving cloth and spinning yarn and thread much easier.
Producing cloth became faster and required less time and far less human labor.

More efficient, mechanized production meant Britain’s new textile factories could meet the
growing demand for cloth both at home and abroad, where the nation’s many overseas colonies

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provided a captive market for its goods. In addition to textiles, the British iron industry also
adopted new innovations.

Chief among the new techniques was the smelting of iron ore with coke (a material made by
heating coal) instead of the traditional charcoal. This method was both cheaper and produced
higher-quality material, enabling Britain’s iron and steel production to expand in response to
demand created by the Napoleonic Wars (1803-15) and the later growth of the railroad
industry.

Impact of Steam Power

An icon of the Industrial Revolution broke onto the scene in the early 1700s, when Thomas
Newcomen designed the prototype for the first modern steam engine. Called the “atmospheric
steam engine,” Newcomen’s invention was originally applied to power the machines used to
pump water out of mine shafts.

In the 1760s, Scottish engineer James Watt began tinkering with one of Newcomen’s models,
adding a separate water condenser that made it far more efficient. Watt later collaborated with
Matthew Boulton to invent a steam engine with a rotary motion, a key innovation that would
allow steam power to spread across British industries, including flour, paper, and cotton mills,
iron works, distilleries, waterworks and canals.

Just as steam engines needed coal, steam power allowed miners to go deeper and extract more
of this relatively cheap energy source. The demand for coal skyrocketed throughout the
Industrial Revolution and beyond, as it would be needed to run not only the factories used to
produce manufactured goods, but also the railroads and steamships used for transporting them.

Transportation During the Industrial Revolution

Britain’s road network, which had been relatively primitive prior to industrialization, soon saw
substantial improvements, and more than 2,000 miles of canals were in use across Britain by
1815.

In the early 1800s, Richard Trevithick debuted a steam-powered locomotive, and in 1830
similar locomotives started transporting freight (and passengers) between the industrial hubs
of Manchester and Liverpool. By that time, steam-powered boats and ships were already in
wide use, carrying goods along Britain’s rivers and canals as well as across the Atlantic.

Communication and Banking in the Industrial Revolution

The latter part of the Industrial Revolution also saw key advances in communication methods,
as people increasingly saw the need to communicate efficiently over long distances. In 1837,
British inventors William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone patented the first
commercial telegraphy system, even as Samuel Morse and other inventors worked on their
own versions in the United States. Cooke and Wheatstone’s system would be used for railroad

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signalling, as the speed of the new trains had created a need for more sophisticated means of
communication.

Banks and industrial financiers rose to new prominent during the period, as well as a factory
system dependent on owners and managers. A stock exchange was established in London in
the 1770s; the New York Stock Exchange was founded in the early 1790s.

In 1776, Scottish social philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790), who is regarded as the founder
of modern economics, published The Wealth of Nations. In it, Smith promoted an economic
system based on free enterprise, the private ownership of means of production, and lack of
government interference.

Working Conditions

Though many people in Britain had begun moving to the cities from rural areas before the
Industrial Revolution, this process accelerated dramatically with industrialization, as the rise
of large factories turned smaller towns into major cities over the span of decades. This rapid
urbanization brought significant challenges, as overcrowded cities suffered from pollution,
inadequate sanitation and a lack of clean drinking water.

Meanwhile, even as industrialization increased economic output overall and improved the
standard of living for the middle and upper classes, poor and working class people continued
to struggle. The mechanization of labor created by technological innovation had made working
in factories increasingly tedious (and sometimes dangerous), and many workers were forced to
work long hours for pitifully low wages. Such dramatic changes fueled opposition to
industrialization, including the “Luddites,” known for their violent resistance to changes in
Britain’s textile industry.

Did you know? The word "luddite" refers to a person who is opposed to technological change.
The term is derived from a group of early 19th century English workers who attacked factories
and destroyed machinery as a means of protest. They were supposedly led by a man named
Ned Ludd, though he may have been an apocryphal figure.
In the decades to come, outrage over substandard working and living conditions would fuel the
formation of labor unions, as well as the passage of new child labor laws and public health
regulations in both Britain and the United States, all aimed at improving life for working class
and poor citizens who had been negatively impacted by industrialization.

READ MORE: How the Industrial Revolution Gave Rise to Violent 'Luddites'

The Industrial Revolution in the United States

The beginning of industrialization in the United States is usually pegged to the opening of a
textile mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1793 by the recent English immigrant Samuel Slater.
Slater had worked at one of the mills opened by Richard Arkwright (inventor of the water
frame) mills, and despite laws prohibiting the emigration of textile workers, he brought

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Arkwright’s designs across the Atlantic. He later built several other cotton mills in New
England, and became known as the “Father of the American Industrial Revolution.”

The United States followed its own path to industrialization, spurred by innovations
“borrowed” from Britain as well as by homegrown inventors like Eli Whitney. Whitney’s 1793
invention of the cotton gin revolutionized the nation’s cotton industry (and strengthened the
hold of slavery over the cotton-producing South).

READ MORE: How Slavery Became the Economic Engine of the South

By the end of the 19th century, with the so-called Second Industrial Revolution underway, the
United States would also transition from a largely agrarian society to an increasingly urbanized
one, with all the attendant problems. By the mid-19th century, industrialization was well-
established throughout the western part of Europe and America’s northeastern region. By the
early 20th century, the U.S. had become the world’s leading industrial nation.

Historians continue to debate many aspects of industrialization, including its exact timeline,
why it began in Britain as opposed to other parts of the world and the idea that it was actually
more of a gradual evolution than a revolution. The positives and negatives of the Industrial
Revolution are complex. On one hand, unsafe working conditions were rife and pollution from
coal and gas are legacies we still struggle with today. On the other, the move to cities and
inventions that made clothing, communication and transportation more affordable and
accessible to the masses changed the course of world history. Regardless of these questions,
the Industrial Revolution had a transformative economic, social and cultural impact, and played
an integral role in laying the foundations for modern society.

The Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the Technological Revolution,[1] was a
phase of rapid standardization and industrialization from the late 19th century into the early
20th century. The First Industrial Revolution, which ended in the middle of 19th century, was
punctuated by a slowdown in important inventions before the Second Industrial Revolution in
1870. Though a number of its events can be traced to earlier innovations in manufacturing,
such as the establishment of a machine tool industry, the development of methods for
manufacturing interchangeable parts and the invention of the Bessemer Process to
produce steel, the Second Industrial Revolution is generally dated between 1870 and 1914 (the
beginning of World War I).[2]
Advancements in manufacturing and production technology enabled the widespread adoption
of technological systems such as telegraph and railroad networks, gas and water supply,
and sewage systems, which had earlier been concentrated to a few select cities. The enormous
expansion of rail and telegraph lines after 1870 allowed unprecedented movement of people
and ideas, which culminated in a new wave of globalization. In the same time period, new
technological systems were introduced, most significantly electrical power and telephones.
The Second Industrial Revolution continued into the 20th century with early
factory electrification and the production line, and ended at the beginning of World War I.

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 James Watt

Textile manufacturing
was benefitted from the
effects of the First
Industrial Revolution
and there were several
inventions that
streamlined the
manufacturing
process. In 1733, the
clockmaker John
Kay invented the flying
shuttle, which replaced
the handheld shuttle
used in weaving. His
invention sped up the
weaving process and
allowed for faster
production such that
weavers were outpacing
John Kay spinners. In
1764, James
Hargreaves, a carpenter,
developed a way to

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 speed up spinning. He
did this by attaching
several spindles to a
single spinning wheel.
Using this spinning
jenny, as it was called, a
person could spin
several threads at
once. In 1769, Richard
Arkwright developed a
spinning machine,
called the water
frame, that could hold
up to 100 spindles
and was capable of
producing strong yarn.
The machine replaced
the need for manual
labour and enabled the
production of
inexpensive spun cotton
Richard Arkwright by the use of moving
water from a creek or
river. It was important
at the time because
cotton was used for
clothing and other
everyday items. In
1793, the American Eli
Whitney invented the
cotton gin - a machine
that automated and sped
up the separation of
cottonseed from the
short-staple cotton
fiber. The invention
helped the British
cotton industry because
it increased the
production of cotton
and made it
cheaper. Samuel Slater
is considered to be the
“Father of the American
Industrial Revolution”
when he introduced
British industrial
techniques into
American textile mills
in the late 18th

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 century. Slater, who
was born in England,
arrived in the United
States in 1789 and
having memorized
many of the techniques
used in British factories,
used his knowledge to
develop similar
production methods in
the United States. For
example, he helped a
fledgling textile mill in
Rhode Island in 1793
with the operation of its
spindle frame. Soon,
Slater’s designs were
spreading across the
east coast of the United
States in numerous
other textile operations.