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Industrial Revolution

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: General history

   A Watt steam engine in Madrid. The development of the steam engine
   propelled the Industrial Revolution in Britain and the world. The steam
   engine was created to pump water from coal mines, enabling them to be
   deepened beyond groundwater levels.
   Enlarge
   A Watt steam engine in Madrid. The development of the steam engine
   propelled the Industrial Revolution in Britain and the world. The steam
   engine was created to pump water from coal mines, enabling them to be
   deepened beyond groundwater levels.

   The Industrial Revolution was the major shift of technological,
   socioeconomic and cultural conditions in the late 18th and early 19th
   century that began in Britain and spread throughout the world. During
   that time, an economy based on manual labour was replaced by one
   dominated by industry and the manufacture of machinery. It began with
   the mechanisation of the textile industries and the development of
   iron-making techniques, and trade expansion was enabled by the
   introduction of canals, improved roads and railways. The introduction
   of steam power (fuelled primarily by coal) and powered machinery
   (mainly in textile manufacturing) underpinned the dramatic increases in
   production capacity. The development of all-metal machine tools in the
   first two decades of the 19th century facilitated the manufacture of
   more production machines for manufacturing in other industries.

   The period of time covered by the Industrial Revolution varies with
   different historians. Eric Hobsbawm held that it 'broke out' in the
   1780s and was not fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s, while T.S.
   Ashton held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830 (in effect
   the reigns of George III, The Regency, and George IV).

   The effects spread throughout Western Europe and North America during
   the 19th century, eventually affecting most of the world. The impact of
   this change on society was enormous and is often compared to the
   Neolithic revolution, when various human subgroups embraced agriculture
   and in the process, forswore the nomadic lifestyle.

   The first Industrial Revolution merged into the Second Industrial
   Revolution around 1850, when technological and economic progress gained
   momentum with the development of steam-powered ships, railways, and
   later in the nineteenth century with the internal combustion engine and
   electrical power generation. At the turn of the century, innovator
   Henry Ford, father of the assembly line, stated, "There is but one rule
   for the industrialist, and that is: Make the highest quality goods
   possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages
   possible."

   It has been argued that GDP per capita was much more stable and
   progressed at a much slower rate until the Industrial Revolution and
   the emergence of the modern capitalist economy, and that it has since
   increased rapidly in capitalist countries.

   Some twentieth century historians such as John Clapham and Nicholas
   Crafts have argued that the process of economic and social change took
   place gradually and the term revolution is not a true description of
   what took place. This is still a subject of debate amongst historians.

Nomenclature

   The term Industrial Revolution applied to technological change was
   common in the 1830s. Louis-Auguste Blanqui in 1837 spoke of la
   révolution industrielle. Friedrich Engels in The Condition of the
   Working Class in England in 1844 spoke of "an industrial revolution, a
   revolution which at the same time changed the whole of civil society".

   In his book Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Raymond
   Williams states in the entry for Industry: The idea of a new social
   order based on major industrial change was clear in Southey and Owen,
   between 1811 and 1818, and was implicit as early as Blake in the early
   1790s and Wordsworth at the turn of the century.

   Credit for popularising the term may be given to Arnold Toynbee, whose
   lectures given in 1881 gave a detailed account of the process.

Innovations

   The invention of the steam engine was the most important innovation of
   the Industrial Revolution. James Watt, later to be a member of the
   Lunar Society, developed the idea of using steam to power machines into
   a practicality thus enabling rapid development of efficient
   semi-automated factories on a previously unimaginable scale. This was
   applied to all aspects of industry and engineering. Earlier
   improvements in iron smelting and metal working based on the use of
   coke rather than charcoal allowed Watt and others before him to exploit
   the possibilities of using steam as a form of power. Earlier in the
   18th century, the textile industry had harnessed water power to drive
   improved spinning machines and looms. These textile mills became the
   model for the organisation of human labour in factories, epitomised by
   Cottonopolis the name given to the vast collection of mills, factories
   and administration offices based in Manchester.

   Besides the innovation of machinery in factories, the assembly line
   greatly improved efficiency. With a series of men trained to do a
   single task on a product, then having it moved along to the next
   worker, the number of finished goods also rose significantly.

Transfer of knowledge

   Knowledge of new innovation was spread by several means. Workers who
   were trained in the technique might move to another employer or might
   be poached. A common method was for someone to make a study tour,
   gathering information where he could. During the whole of the
   Industrial Revolution and for the century before, all European
   countries and America engaged in study-touring; some nations, like
   Sweden and France, even trained civil servants or technicians to
   undertake it as a matter of state policy. In other countries, notably
   Britain and America, this practice was carried out by individual
   manufacturers anxious to improve their own methods. Study tours were
   common then, as now, as was the keeping of travel diaries. Records made
   by industrialists and technicians of the period are an incomparable
   source of information about their methods.

   Another means for the spread of innovation was by the network of
   informal philosophical societies—like the Lunar Society of
   Birmingham—in which members met to discuss science and often its
   application to manufacturing. Some of these societies published volumes
   of proceedings and transactions, and the London-based Royal Society of
   Arts published an illustrated volume of new inventions, as well as
   papers about them in its annual Transactions.

   There were publications describing technology. Encyclopedias such as
   Harris's Lexicon technicum (1704) and Dr. Abraham Rees's Cyclopaedia
   (1802-1819) contain much of value. Cyclopaedia contains an enormous
   amount of information about the science and technology of the first
   half of the Industrial Revolution, very well illustrated by fine
   engravings. Foreign printed sources such as the Descriptions des Arts
   et Métiers and Diderot's Encyclopédie explained foreign methods with
   fine engraved plates.

   Periodical publications about manufacturing and technology began to
   appear in the last decade of the 18th century, and many regularly
   included notice of the latest patents. Foreign periodicals, such as the
   Annales des Mines, published accounts of travels made by French
   engineers who observed British methods on study tours.

Industry

Mining

   Coal mining in Britain, particularly in South Wales started early.
   Before the steam engine, pits were often shallow bell pits following a
   seam of coal along the surface which were abandoned as the coal was
   extracted. In other cases, if the geology was favourable, the coal was
   mined by means of an adit driven into the side of a hill. Shaft mining
   was done in some areas, but the limiting factor was the problem of
   removing water. It could be done by hauling buckets of water up the
   shaft or to a sough (a tunnel driven into a hill to drain a mine). In
   either case, the water had to be discharged into a stream or ditch at a
   level where it could flow away by gravity. The introduction of the
   steam engine greatly facilitated the removal of water and enabled
   shafts to be made deeper, enabling more coal to be extracted. These
   were developments that had begun before the Industrial Revolution, but
   the adoption of James Watt's more efficient steam engine with its
   separate condenser from the 1770s reduced the fuel costs of engines,
   making mines more profitable.

Metallurgy

   Reverberatory Furnace
   Enlarge
   Reverberatory Furnace

   The major change in the metal industries during the era of the
   Industrial Revolution was the replacement of organic fuels based on
   wood with fossil fuel based on coal. Much of this happened somewhat
   before the Industrial Revolution, based on innovations by Sir Clement
   Clerke and others from 1678, using coal reverberatory furnaces known as
   cupolas. These were operated by the flames, which contained carbon
   monoxide, playing on the ore and reducing the oxide to metal. This has
   the advantage that impurities (such as sulfur) in the coal do not
   migrate into the metal. This technology was applied to lead from 1678
   and to copper from 1687. It was also applied to iron foundry work in
   the 1690s, but in this case the reverberatory furnace was known as an
   air furnace. The foundry cupola is a different (and later) innovation.

   This was followed by Abraham Darby, who made great strides using coke
   to fuel his blast furnaces at Coalbrookdale in 1709. However, the coke
   pig iron he made was used mostly for the production of cast iron goods
   such as pots and kettles. He had an advantage over his rivals in that
   his pots, cast by his patented process, were thinner and cheaper than
   those of his rivals. Coke pig iron was hardly used to produce bar iron
   in forges until the mid 1750s, when his son Abraham Darby II built
   Horsehay and Ketley furnaces (not far from Coalbrookdale). By then,
   coke pig iron was cheaper than charcoal pig iron.

   Bar iron for smiths to forge into consumer goods was still made in
   finery forges, as it long had been. However, new processes were adopted
   in the ensuing years. The first is referred to today as potting and
   stamping, but this was superseded by Henry Cort's puddling process.
   From 1785, perhaps because the improved version of potting and stamping
   was about to come out of patent, a great expansion in the output of the
   British iron industry began. The new processes did not depend on the
   use of charcoal at all and were therefore not limited by charcoal
   sources.

   Up to that time, British iron manufacturers had used considerable
   amounts of imported iron to supplement native supplies. This came
   principally from Sweden from the mid 17th century and later also from
   Russia from the end of the 1720s. However, from 1785, imports decreased
   because of the new iron making technology, and Britain became an
   exporter of bar iron as well as manufactured wrought iron consumer
   goods.

   Since iron was becoming cheaper and more plentiful, it also became a
   major structural material following the building of the innovative Iron
   Bridge in 1778 by Abraham Darby III.

   An improvement was made in the production of steel, which was an
   expensive commodity and used only where iron would not do, such as for
   the cutting edge of tools and for springs. Benjamin Huntsman developed
   his crucible steel technique in the 1740s. The raw material for this
   was blister steel, made by the cementation process.

   The supply of cheaper iron and steel aided the development of boilers
   and steam engines, and eventually railways. Improvements in machine
   tools allowed better working of iron and steel and further boosted the
   industrial growth of Britain.

Chemicals

   The large scale production of chemicals was an important development
   during the Industrial Revolution. The first of these was the production
   of sulfuric acid by the lead chamber process invented by the Englishman
   John Roebuck (James Watt's first partner) in 1746. He was able to
   greatly increase the scale of the manufacture by replacing the
   relatively expensive glass vessels formerly used with larger, less
   expensive chambers made of riveted sheets of lead. Instead of a few
   pounds at a time, he was able to make a hundred pounds (45 kg) or so at
   a time in each of the chambers.

   The production of an alkali on a large scale became an important goal
   as well, and Nicolas Leblanc succeeded in 1791 in introducing a method
   for the production of sodium carbonate. The Leblanc process was a
   reaction of sulfuric acid with sodium chloride to give sodium sulfate
   and hydrochloric acid. The sodium sulfate was heated with limestone
   (calcium carbonate) and coal to give a mixture of sodium carbonate and
   calcium sulfide. Adding water separated the soluble sodium carbonate
   from the calcium sulfide. The process produced a large amount of
   pollution (the hydrochloric acid was initially vented to the air, and
   calcium sulfide was a useless waste product) but proved economical over
   the previous method of deriving it from wood ashes, barilla, or kelp.

   These two chemicals were very important because they enabled the
   introduction of a host of other inventions, replacing many small-scale
   operations with more cost-effective and controllable processes. Sodium
   carbonate had many uses in the glass, textile, soap, and paper
   industries. Early uses for sulfuric acid included pickling (removing
   rust) iron and steel, and for bleaching cloth.

   The development of bleaching powder ( calcium hypochlorite) by Scottish
   chemist Charles Tennant in about 1800, based on the discoveries of
   French chemist Claude Louis Berthollet, revolutionized the bleaching
   processes in the textile industry by dramatically reducing the time
   required (from months to days) for the traditional process then in use,
   which required repeated exposure to the sun in bleach fields after
   soaking the textiles with alkali or sour milk. Tennant's factory at St.
   Rollox, North Glasgow, became the largest chemical plant in the world.

Steam power

   Newcomen's atmospheric steam engine
   Enlarge
   Newcomen's atmospheric steam engine

   The development of the stationary steam engine was an essential early
   element of the Industrial Revolution; however, for most of the period
   of the Industrial Revolution, the majority of industries still relied
   on wind and water power as well as horse and man-power for driving
   small machines.

   The industrial use of steam power started with Thomas Savery in 1698.
   He constructed and patented in London the first engine, which he called
   the "Miner's Friend" since he intended it to pump water from mines.
   This machine used steam at 8 to 10 atmospheres (120-150 psi and did not
   use a piston and cylinder but applied the steam pressure directly on to
   the surface of water in a cylinder to force it along an outlet pipe. It
   also used condensed steam to produce a partial vacuum to suck water
   into the cylinder. It generated about one horsepower (hp). It was used
   as a low-lift water pump in a few mines and numerous water works, but
   it was not a success since it was limited in the height it could raise
   water and was prone to boiler explosions.

   The first successful machine was the atmospheric engine, a low
   performance steam engine invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712. Newcomen
   apparently conceived his machine quite independently of Savery. His
   engines used a piston and cylinder, and it operated with steam just
   above atmospheric pressure which was used to produce a partial vacuum
   in the cylinder when condensed by jets of cold water. The vacuum sucked
   a piston into the cylinder which moved under pressure from the
   atmosphere. The engine produced a succession of power strokes which
   could work a pump but could not drive a rotating wheel. They were
   successfully put to use for pumping out mines in Britain, with the
   engine on the surface working a pump at the bottom of the mine by a
   long connecting rod. These were large machines, requiring a lot of
   capital to build, but produced about 5 hp. They were inefficient, but
   when located where coal was cheap at pit heads, they were usefully
   employed in pumping water from mines. They opened up a great expansion
   in coal mining by allowing mines to go deeper. Despite using a lot of
   fuel, Newcomen engines continued to be used in the coalfields until the
   early decades of the nineteenth century because they were reliable and
   easy to maintain.

   By 1729, when Newcomen died, his engines had spread to France, Germany,
   Austria, Hungary and Sweden. A total of 110 are known to have been
   built by 1733 when the patent expired, of which 14 were abroad. A total
   of 1,454 engines had been built by 1800.

   Its working was fundamentally unchanged until James Watt succeeded in
   making his Watt steam engine in 1769, which incorporated a series of
   improvements, especially the separate steam condenser chamber. This
   improved engine efficiency by about a factor of five saving 75% on coal
   costs. The Watt steam engine's ability to drive rotary machinery also
   meant it could be used to drive a factory or mill directly. They were
   commercially very successful, and by 1800, the firm Boulton & Watt had
   constructed 496 engines, with 164 acting as pumps, 24 serving blast
   furnaces, and 308 to power mill machinery. Most of the engines
   generated between 5 to 10 hp.

   The development of machine tools, such as the lathe, planing and
   shaping machines powered by these engines, enabled all the metal parts
   of the engines to be easily and accurately cut and in turn made it
   possible to build larger and more powerful engines.

   Until about 1800, the most common pattern of steam engine was the beam
   engine, which was built within a stone or brick engine-house, but
   around that time various patterns of portable (readily removable
   engines, but not on wheels) engines were developed, such as the table
   engine.

   Richard Trevithick, a Cornish blacksmith, began to use high pressure
   steam with improved boilers in 1799. This allowed engines to be compact
   enough to be used on mobile road and rail locomotives and steam boats.

   In the early 19th century after the expiration of Watt's patent, the
   steam engine had many improvements by a host of inventors and
   engineers.

Textile manufacture

   Model of the spinning jenny in a museum in Wuppertal, Germany. The
   spinning jenny was one of the innovations that started the revolution.
   Enlarge
   Model of the spinning jenny in a museum in Wuppertal, Germany. The
   spinning jenny was one of the innovations that started the revolution.

   In the early 18th century, British textile manufacture was based on
   wool which was processed by individual artisans, doing the spinning and
   weaving on their own premises. This system is called a cottage
   industry. Flax and cotton were also used for fine materials, but the
   processing was difficult because of the pre-processing needed, and thus
   goods in these materials made only a small proportion of the output.

   Use of the spinning wheel and hand loom restricted the production
   capacity of the industry, but incremental advances increased
   productivity to the extent that manufactured cotton goods became the
   dominant British export by the early decades of the 19th century. India
   was displaced as the premier supplier of cotton goods.

   Lewis Paul and John Wyatt of Birmingham patented the Roller Spinning
   machine and the flyer-and-bobbin system for drawing wool to a more even
   thickness. Paul and Wyatt opened a mill in Birmingham which used their
   new rolling machine powered by a donkey. In 1743, a factory was opened
   in Northampton; fifty spindles turned on five of Paul and Wyatt's
   machines proving more successful than their first Mill and operated
   until 1764. Lewis Paul also invented the hand driven carding machine.
   Using two sets of rollers that travelled at different speeds, it was
   later used in the first cotton spinning mill. Lewis's invention was
   later developed and improved by Richard Arkwright and Samuel Crompton,
   although this came about under great suspicion after a fire at Daniel
   Bourn's factory in Leominster which specifically used Paul and Wyatt's
   spindles. Borne produced a similar patent in the same year. Other
   inventors increased the efficiency of the individual steps of spinning
   (carding, twisting and spinning, and rolling) so that the supply of
   yarn increased greatly, which fed a weaving industry that was advancing
   with improvements to shuttles and the loom or 'frame'. The output of an
   individual labourer increased dramatically, with the effect that the
   new machines were seen as a threat to employment, and early innovators
   were attacked and their inventions destroyed.

   To capitalize upon these advances, it took a class of entrepreneurs, of
   which the most famous is Richard Arkwright. He is credited with a list
   of inventions, but these were actually developed by people such as
   Thomas Highs and John Kay; Arkwright nurtured the inventors, patented
   the ideas, financed the initiatives, and protected the machines. He
   created the cotton mill which brought the production processes together
   in a factory, and he developed the use of power — first horse power,
   then water power and finally steam power — which made cotton
   manufacture a mechanized industry.

Factories

   Over London by Rail Gustave Doré c 1870. Shows the densely populated
   and polluted environments created in the new industrial cities
   Enlarge
   Over London by Rail Gustave Doré c 1870. Shows the densely populated
   and polluted environments created in the new industrial cities

   Industrialisation also led to the creation of the factory. John Lombe's
   water-powered silk mill at Derby was operational by 1721. In 1746, an
   integrated brass mill was working at Warmley near Bristol. Raw material
   went in at one end, was smelted into brass and was turned into pans,
   pins, wire, and other goods. Housing was provided for workers on site.

   Josiah Wedgwood and Matthew Boulton were other prominent early
   industrialists.

   The factory system was largely responsible for the rise of the modern
   city, as workers migrated into the cities in search of employment in
   the factories. Nowhere was this better illustrated than the mills and
   associated industries of Manchester, nicknamed Cottonopolis, and
   arguably the world's first industrial city. For much of the 19th
   century, production was done in small mills, which were typically
   powered by water and built to serve local needs.

   The transition to industrialisation was not wholly smooth. For example,
   a group of English workers known as Luddites formed to protest against
   industrialisation and sometimes sabotaged factories.

   One of the earliest reformers of factory conditions was Robert Owen.

Machine tools

   The Industrial Revolution could not have developed without machine
   tools, for they enabled manufacturing machines to be made. They have
   their origins in the tools developed in the 18th century by makers of
   clocks and watches and scientific instrument makers to enable them to
   batch-produce small mechanisms. The mechanical parts of early textile
   machines were sometimes called 'clock work' because of the metal
   spindles and gears they incorporated. The manufacture of textile
   machines drew craftsmen from these trades and is the origin of the
   modern engineering industry.

   Machines were built by various craftsmen— carpenters made wooden
   framings, and smiths and turners made metal parts. A good example of
   how machine tools changed manufacturing took place in Birmingham,
   England, in 1830. The invention of a new machine by William Joseph
   Gillott, William Mitchell and James Stephen Perry allowed mass
   manufacture of robust, cheap steel pen nibs; the process had been
   laborious and expensive. Because of the difficulty of manipulating
   metal and the lack of machine tools, the use of metal was kept to a
   minimum. Wood framing had the disadvantage of changing dimensions with
   temperature and humidity, and the various joints tended to rack (work
   loose) over time. As the Industrial Revolution progressed, machines
   with metal frames became more common, but they required machine tools
   to make them economically. Before the advent of machine tools, metal
   was worked manually using the basic hand tools of hammers, files,
   scrapers, saws and chisels. Small metal parts were readily made by this
   means, but for large machine parts, production was very laborious and
   costly.

   Apart from workshop lathes used by craftsmen, the first large machine
   tool was the cylinder boring machine used for boring the large-diameter
   cylinders on early steam engines. The planing machine, the slotting
   machine and the shaping machine were developed in the first decades of
   the 19th century. Although the milling machine was invented at this
   time, it was not developed as a serious workshop tool until during the
   Second Industrial Revolution.

   Military production had a hand in the development of machine tools.
   Henry Maudslay, who trained a school of machine tool makers early in
   the 19th century, was employed at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, as a
   young man where he would have seen the large horse-driven wooden
   machines for cannon boring made and worked by the Verbruggans. He later
   worked for Joseph Bramah on the production of metal locks, and soon
   after he began working on his own. He was engaged to build the
   machinery for making ships' pulley blocks for the Royal Navy in the
   Portsmouth Block Mills. These were all metal and were the first
   machines for mass production and making components with a degree of
   interchangeability. The lessons Maudslay learned about the need for
   stability and precision he adapted to the development of machine tools,
   and in his workshops he trained a generation of men to build on his
   work, such as Richard Roberts, Joseph Clement and Joseph Whitworth.

   James Fox of Derby had a healthy export trade in machine tools for the
   first third of the century, as did Matthew Murray of Leeds. Roberts was
   a maker of high-quality machine tools and a pioneer of the use of jigs
   and gauges for precision workshop measurement.

Transportation

   At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, inland transport was by
   navigable rivers and roads, with coastal vessels employed to move heavy
   goods by sea. Railways or wagon ways were used for conveying coal to
   rivers for further shipment, but canals had not yet been constructed.
   Animals supplied all of the motive power on land, with sails providing
   the motive power on the sea.

   The Industrial Revolution improved Britain’s transport infrastructure
   with a turnpike road network, a canal, and waterway network, and a
   railway network. Raw materials and finished products could be moved
   more quickly and cheaply than before. Improved transportation also
   allowed new ideas to spread quickly.

Navigable rivers

   All the major rivers of the United Kingdom were made more navigable
   during the Industrial Revolution. The Severn, in particular, was used
   for the movement of goods to the Midlands which had been imported into
   Bristol from abroad, and for the export of goods from centres of
   production in Shropshire such as iron goods from Coalbrookdale.
   Transport was by way of trows—small sailing vessels which could pass
   the various shallows and bridges in the river. The trows could navigate
   the Bristol Channel to the South Wales ports and Somerset ports, such
   as Bridgwater and even as far as France.

Coastal sail

   Sailing vessels had long been used for moving goods round the British
   coast. The trade transporting coal to London from Newcastle had begun
   in medieval times. The major international seaports such as London,
   Bristol, and Liverpool, were the means by which raw materials such as
   cotton might be imported and finished goods exported. Transporting
   goods onwards within Britain by sea was common during the whole of the
   Industrial Revolution and only fell away with the growth of the
   railways at the end of the period.

Canals

   Canals began to be built in the late eighteenth century to link the
   major manufacturing centres in the Midlands and north with seaports and
   with London, at that time the largest manufacturing centre in the
   country. Canals were the first technology to allow bulk materials to be
   easily transported across country. A single canal horse could pull a
   load dozens of times larger than a cart at a faster pace. By the 1820s,
   a national network was in existence. Canal construction served as a
   model for the organisation and methods later used to construct the
   railways. They were eventually largely superseded as profitable
   commercial enterprises by the spread of the railways from the 1840s on.

   Britain's canal network, together with its surviving mill buildings, is
   one of the most enduring features of the early Industrial Revolution to
   be seen in Britain.

Roads

   Much of the original British road system was poorly maintained by
   thousands of local parishes, but from the 1720s (and occasionally
   earlier) turnpike trusts were set up to charge tolls and maintain some
   roads. Increasing numbers of main roads were turnpiked from the 1750s
   to the extent that almost every main road in England and Wales was the
   responsibility of some turnpike trust. New engineered roads were built
   by John Metcalf, Thomas Telford and John Macadam. The major turnpikes
   radiated from London and were the means by which the Royal Mail was
   able to reach the rest of the country. Heavy goods transport on these
   roads was by means of slow broad wheeled carts hauled by teams of
   horses. Lighter goods were conveyed by smaller carts or by teams of
   pack horses. Stage coaches transported rich people. The less wealthy
   walked or paid to ride on a carriers cart.

Railways

   Wagonways for moving coal in the mining areas had started in the 17th
   century and were often associated with canal or river systems for the
   further movement of coal. These were all horse drawn or relied on
   gravity, with a stationary steam engine to haul the wagons back to the
   top of the incline. The first applications of the steam locomotive were
   on waggon or plate ways (as they were then often called from the cast
   iron plates used). Horse-drawn public railways did not begin until the
   early years of the 19th century. Steam-hauled public railways began
   with the Liverpool and Manchester and Stockton and Darlington Railways
   of the late 1820s. The construction of major railways connecting the
   larger cities and towns began in the 1830s but only gained momentum at
   the very end of the first Industrial Revolution.

   After many of the workers had completed the railways, they did not
   return to their rural lifestyles but instead remained in the cities,
   providing additional workers for the factories.

   Railways helped Britain's trade enormously, providing a quick and easy
   method of transport.

Social effects

   In terms of social structure, the Industrial Revolution witnessed the
   triumph of a middle class of industrialists and businessmen over a
   landed class of nobility and gentry.

   Ordinary working people found increased opportunities for employment in
   the new mills and factories, but these were often under strict working
   conditions with long hours of labour dominated by a pace set by
   machines. Harsh working conditions were prevalent long before the
   industrial revolution took place as well. Pre-industrial society was
   very static and often cruel—child labour, dirty living conditions and
   long working hours were just as prevalent before the Industrial
   Revolution.

Child labour

   Child labour had existed before the Industrial Revolution.

   The Industrial Revolution led to a population increase. Industrial
   workers were better paid than those in agriculture. With more money,
   women ate better, had healthier babies, who were themselves better fed.
   Death rates declined, and the distribution of age in the population
   became more youthful. There was limited opportunity for education, and
   children were expected to work. Employers also liked that they could
   pay a child less than an adult.

   Politicians and the government tried to limit child labour by law, but
   factory owners resisted; some felt that they were aiding the poor by
   giving their children money to buy food to avoid starvation, and others
   simply welcomed the cheap labour. In 1833, the first law against child
   labour, the Factory Act of 1833, was passed in England: Children
   younger than nine were not allowed to work, children were not permitted
   to work at night, and the work day of youth under the age of 18 was
   limited to twelve hours. Factory inspectors supervised the execution of
   the law. About ten years later, the employment of children and women in
   mining was forbidden. These laws decreased the number of child
   labourers; however, child labour remained in Europe up to the 20th
   century.

Housing

   Living conditions during the Industrial Revolution varied from the
   splendour of the homes of the owners to the squalor of the lives of the
   workers. Cliffe Castle, Keighley, is a good example of how the newly
   rich chose to live. This is a large home modelled loosely on a castle
   with towers and garden walls. The home is very large and was surrounded
   by a massive garden, the estate itself stretching for a number of
   miles. Cliffe Castle is now open to the public as a museum.

   Poor people lived in small houses in cramped streets. These homes would
   share toilet facilities, have open sewers and would be at risk of damp.
   Conditions did improve during the 19th century as public health acts
   were introduced covering things such as sewage, hygiene and making some
   boundaries upon the construction of homes. Not everybody lived in homes
   like these. The Industrial Revolution created a larger middle class of
   professionals such as lawyers and doctors. The conditions for the poor
   improved over the course of the 19th century because of government and
   local plans which led to cities becoming cleaner places, but life had
   not been easy for the poor before industrialisation.

Luddites

   The rapid industrialisation of the English economy cost many craft
   workers their jobs. The textile industry in particular industrialized
   early, and many weavers found themselves suddenly unemployed since they
   could no longer compete with machines which only required relatively
   limited (and unskilled) labour to produce more cloth than a single
   weaver. Many such unemployed workers, weavers and others, turned their
   animosity towards the machines that had taken their jobs and began
   destroying factories and machinery. These attackers became known as
   Luddites, supposedly followers of Ned Ludd, a folklore figure. The
   first attacks of the Luddite movement began in 1811. The Luddites
   rapidly gained popularity, and the British government had to take
   drastic measures to protect industry.

Organization of Labour

   Conditions for the working class had been bad for millennia. The
   Industrial Revolution, however, concentrated labour into mills,
   factories and mines, and this facilitated the organisation of trade
   unions to help advance the interests of working people. The power of a
   union could demand better terms by withdrawing all labour and causing a
   consequent cessation of production. Employers had to decide between
   giving in to the union demands at a cost to themselves or suffer the
   cost of the lost production. Skilled workers were hard to replace, and
   these were the first groups to successfully advance their conditions
   through this kind of bargaining.

   The main method the unions used to effect change was strike action.
   Strikes were painful events for both sides, the unions and the
   management. The management was affected because strikes took their
   working force away for a long period of time; the unions had to deal
   the loss of income as well as with riot police and various middle class
   prejudices that striking workers were the same as criminals. The
   strikes often led to violent and bloody clashes between police or
   military and workers. Factory managers usually reluctantly gave in to
   various demands made by strikers, but the conflict was generally long
   standing.

   In England, the Combination Act forbade workers to form any kind of
   trade union from 1799 until its repeal in 1824. Even after this, unions
   were still severely restricted.

   In 1842, a General Strike involving cotton workers and colliers and
   organised through the Chartist movement stopped production across Great
   Britain.

Other effects

   World GDP/capita changed very little for most of human history before
   the industrial revolution. (The empty areas mean no data, not very low
   levels. There are data for the years 1, 1000, 1500, 1600, 1700, 1820,
   1900, and 2003.)
   Enlarge
   World GDP/capita changed very little for most of human history before
   the industrial revolution. (The empty areas mean no data, not very low
   levels. There are data for the years 1, 1000, 1500, 1600, 1700, 1820,
   1900, and 2003.)
   Enlarge
   Roughly exponential increase in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil
   fuels, driven by increasing energy demands since the Industrial
   Revolution (See Global warming)
   Enlarge
   Roughly exponential increase in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil
   fuels, driven by increasing energy demands since the Industrial
   Revolution (See Global warming)

   The application of steam power to the industrial processes of printing
   supported a massive expansion of newspaper and popular book publishing,
   which reinforced rising literacy and demands for mass political
   participation.

   During the Industrial Revolution, the life expectancy of children
   increased dramatically. The percentage of the children born in London
   who died before the age of five decreased from 74.5% in 1730 - 1749 to
   31.8% in 1810 - 1829. Besides, there was a significant increase in
   worker wages during the period 1813-1913.

   The Industrial Revolution had significant impacts on the structure of
   society. Prior to its rise, the public and private spheres held strong
   overlaps; work was often conducted through the home and thus was shared
   in many cases by wife and husband. However, during this period the two
   began to separate, with work and home life considered quite distinct
   from one another. This shift made it necessary for one partner to
   maintain the home and care for children. Women, holding the distinction
   of being able to breastfeed, thus more often maintained the home, with
   men making up a sizeable fraction of the workforce. With much of the
   family income coming from men, then, their power in relation to women
   increased further, with the latter often dependent on men's income.
   This had enormous impacts on the defining of gender roles and was
   effectively the model for what was later termed the traditional family.

   However, the need for a large workforce and resulting wages also
   enticed many women into industrial work, where they were often paid
   much less in relation to men. This was mostly because of a lack of
   organised labour among women to push for benefits and wage increases,
   and in part to ensure women's continued dependence on a man's income to
   survive.

Intellectual paradigms

Capitalism

   The advent of The Enlightenment provided an intellectual framework
   which welcomed the practical application of the growing body of
   scientific knowledge — a factor evidenced in the systematic development
   of the steam engine, guided by scientific analysis, and the development
   of the political and sociological analyses, culminating in Adam Smith's
   The Wealth of Nations. One of the main arguments for capitalism is that
   industrialisation have increased wealth for all, as evidenced by
   raising life expectancy, reduced working hours, and no work for
   children and the elderly.

Criticism

Marxism

   According to Karl Marx, industrialisation polarised society into the
   bourgeoisie (those who own the means of production, the factories and
   the land) and the much larger proletariat (the working class who
   actually perform the labour necessary to extract something valuable
   from the means of production). He saw the industrialisation process as
   the logical dialectical progression of feudal economic modes, necessary
   for the full development of capitalism, which he saw as in itself a
   necessary precursor to the development of socialism and eventually
   communism.

Romantic Movement

   Concurrent with the Industrial Revolution there developed an
   intellectual and artistic hostility towards the new industrialisation
   known as the Romantic Movement. Its major exponents in English included
   the artist and poet William Blake and poets William Wordsworth, Samuel
   Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The
   movement stressed the importance of "nature" in art and language, in
   contrast to the 'monstrous' machines and factories. In Blake's words
   they were the, "Dark satanic mills" of his poem And did those feet in
   ancient time. Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein reflected a concern
   about the possibly two-edged nature of scientific progress.

Second Industrial Revolution

   The insatiable demand of the railways for more durable rail led to the
   development of the means to cheaply mass-produce steel. Steel is often
   cited as the first of several new areas for industrial mass-production,
   which are said to characterize a "Second Industrial Revolution",
   beginning around 1850. This second Industrial Revolution gradually grew
   to include the chemical industries, petroleum refining and
   distribution, electrical industries, and, in the twentieth century, the
   automotive industries, and was marked by a transition of technological
   leadership from Britain to the United States and Germany.

   The introduction of hydroelectric power generation in the Alps enabled
   the rapid industrialisation of coal-deprived northern Italy, beginning
   in the 1890s. The increasing availability of economical petroleum
   products also reduced the importance of coal and further widened the
   potential for industrialisation.

   By the 1890s, industrialisation in these areas had created the first
   giant industrial corporations with burgeoning global interests, as
   companies like U.S. Steel, General Electric, and Bayer AG joined the
   railroad companies on the world's stock markets.

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