The
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing
processes in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and
1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to
machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes,
the increasing use of steam power, the development of machine tools
and the rise of the factory system.
Textiles were the dominant industry of the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution in
terms of employment, value of output and capital invested. The textile
industry was also the first to use modern production methods.[1]:40
The
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain, and many of the
technological innovations were of British origin.[2] By the mid-18th
century Britain was the world's leading commercial nation[3],
controlling a global trading empire with colonies in North America and
Africa, and with some political influence on the Indian subcontinent,
through the activities of the East India Company.[4] The development
of trade and the rise of business were major causes of the Industrial
Revolution.[1]:15
The
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution marks a major turning point in history;
almost every aspect of daily life was influenced in some way. In
particular, average income and population began to exhibit
unprecedented sustained growth. Some economists say that the major
impact of the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution was that the standard of living
for the general population began to increase consistently for the
first time in history, although others have said that it did not begin
to meaningfully improve until the late 19th and 20th
centuries.[5][6][7]
GDP per capita
_Per_Capita_in_2015.svg/800px-Countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_Per_Capita_in_2015.svg.png)
GDP per capita was broadly stable before the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution and
the emergence of the modern capitalist economy,[8] while the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution began an era of per-capita economic growth in
capitalist economies.[9] Economic historians are in agreement that the
onset of the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution is the most important event in the
history of humanity since the domestication of animals and plants.[10]
The precise start and end of the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution is still
debated among historians, as is the pace of economic and social
changes.[11][12][13][14]
Eric Hobsbawm
Eric Hobsbawm held that the Industrial
Revolution began in Britain in the 1780s and was not fully felt until
the 1830s or 1840s,[11] while
T. S. Ashton
T. S. Ashton held that it occurred
roughly between 1760 and 1830.[12] Rapid industrialization first began
in Britain, starting with mechanized spinning in the 1780s,[15] with
high rates of growth in steam power and iron production occurring
after 1800. Mechanized textile production spread from
Great Britain
Great Britain to
continental Europe and the United States in the early 19th century,
with important centres of textiles, iron and coal emerging in Belgium
and the United States and later textiles in France.[1]
An economic recession occurred from the late 1830s to the early 1840s
when the adoption of the original innovations of the Industrial
Revolution, such as mechanized spinning and weaving, slowed and their
markets matured. Innovations developed late in the period, such as the
increasing adoption of locomotives, steamboats and steamships, hot
blast iron smelting and new technologies, such as the electrical
telegraph, widely introduced in the 1840s and 1850s, were not powerful
enough to drive high rates of growth. Rapid economic growth began to
occur after 1870, springing from a new group of innovations in what
has been called the Second Industrial Revolution. These new
innovations included new steel making processes, the large-scale
manufacture of machine tools and the use of increasingly advanced
machinery in steam-powered factories.[1][16][17][18]
Contents
1 Etymology
2 Important technological developments
2.1
Textile
Textile manufacture
2.1.1 British textile industry statistics
2.1.2 Cotton
2.1.3 Trade and textiles
2.1.4 Pre-mechanized European textile production
2.1.5
Invention
Invention of textile machinery
2.1.6 Wool
2.1.7 Silk
2.2
Iron
.jpg/440px-Iron-deficiency_Anemia,_Peripheral_Blood_Smear_(4422704616).jpg)
Iron industry
2.2.1 UK iron production statistics
2.2.2
Iron
Iron process innovations
2.3
Steam
Steam power
2.4
Machine
Machine tools
2.5 Chemicals
2.6 Cement
2.7 Gas lighting
2.8 Glass making
2.9
Paper
Paper machine
2.10 Agriculture
2.11 Mining
2.12 Transportation
2.12.1 Canals and improved waterways
2.12.2 Roads
2.12.3 Railways
2.13 Other developments
3 Social effects
3.1
Factory
Factory system
3.2 Standards of living
3.2.1 Food and nutrition
3.2.2 Housing
3.2.3 Sanitation
3.2.4 Water supply
3.2.5 Increase in literacy
3.3 Clothing and consumer goods
3.4 Population increase
3.5 Urbanization
3.6 Impact on women and family life
3.7 Labour conditions
3.7.1 Social structure and working conditions
3.7.2 Factories and urbanisation
3.7.3 Child labour
3.7.4 Organisation of labour
3.7.5 Luddites
3.7.6 Destruction of hand textile production in India, China, etc.
3.7.7 Effect on cotton production and expansion of slavery
3.8 Impact on environment
4 Industrialisation beyond the United Kingdom
4.1 Continental Europe
4.1.1 Belgium
4.1.1.1 Demographic effects
4.1.2 France
4.1.3 Germany
4.1.4 Sweden
4.2 Japan
4.3 United States
5 Second Industrial Revolution
6 Causes
6.1 Causes in Europe
6.2 Causes in Britain
6.3 Transfer of knowledge
6.3.1 Protestant work ethic
7 Opposition from Romanticism
8 See also
9 References
9.1 Sources
10 External links
Etymology
The earliest recorded use of the term "Industrial Revolution" seems to
have been in a letter from 6 July 1799 written by French envoy
Louis-Guillaume Otto, announcing that France had entered the race to
industrialise.[19] In his 1976 book Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture
and Society,
Raymond Williams
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 [19th]
century." The term
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution applied to technological
change was becoming more common by the late 1830s, as in
Jérôme-Adolphe Blanqui's description in 1837 of la révolution
industrielle.[20]
Friedrich Engels
.jpg/440px-Friedrich_Engels_portrait_(cropped).jpg)
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".
However, although Engels wrote in the 1840s, his book was not
translated into English until the late 1800s, and his expression did
not enter everyday language until then. Credit for popularising the
term may be given to Arnold Toynbee, whose 1881 lectures gave a
detailed account of the term.[21]
Some historians, such as John Clapham and Nicholas Crafts, have argued
that the economic and social changes occurred gradually and the term
revolution is a misnomer. This is still a subject of debate among some
historians.
Important technological developments
The commencement of the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution is closely linked to a
small number of innovations,[22] beginning in the second half of the
18th century. By the 1830s the following gains had been made in
important technologies:
Textiles – mechanised cotton spinning powered by steam or water
increased the output of a worker by a factor of around 500. The power
loom increased the output of a worker by a factor of over 40.[23] The
cotton gin increased productivity of removing seed from cotton by a
factor of 50.[17] Large gains in productivity also occurred in
spinning and weaving of wool and linen, but they were not as great as
in cotton.[1]
Steam power
Steam power – the efficiency of steam engines increased so that they
used between one-fifth and one-tenth as much fuel. The adaptation of
stationary steam engines to rotary motion made them suitable for
industrial uses.[1]:82 The high pressure engine had a high power to
weight ratio, making it suitable for transportation.[24]
Steam
Steam power
underwent a rapid expansion after 1800.
Iron
Iron making – the substitution of coke for charcoal greatly lowered
the fuel cost of pig iron and wrought iron production.[1]:89–93
Using coke also allowed larger blast furnaces,[25][26] resulting in
economies of scale. The steam engine began being used to power blast
air in the mid 1750s, enabling a large increase iron production by
overcoming the limitation of water power.[27] The cast iron blowing
cylinder was first used in 1760. It was later improved by making it
double acting, which allowed higher blast furnace temperatures. The
puddling process produced a structural grade iron at a lower cost than
the finery forge.[28] The rolling mill was fifteen times faster than
hammering wrought iron.
Hot blast
.jpg/440px-Carrie_Furnace_No._7,_U.S._Steel_Homestead_Works,_Blast_Furnace_Plant,_Along_Monongahela_River,_Homestead_(Allegheny_County,_Pennsylvania).jpg)
Hot blast (1828) greatly increased fuel
efficiency in iron production in the following decades.
Invention
Invention of machine tools – The first machine tools were invented.
These included the screw cutting lathe, cylinder boring machine and
the milling machine.
Machine
Machine tools made the economical manufacture of
precision metal parts possible, although it took several decades to
develop effective techniques.[29]
Textile
Textile manufacture
Main article:
Textile
Textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution
British textile industry statistics
In 1750 Britain imported 2.5 million pounds of raw cotton, most of
which was spun and woven by cottage industry in Lancashire. The work
was done by hand in workers' homes or occasionally in shops of master
weavers. In 1787 raw cotton consumption was 22 million pounds, most of
which was cleaned, carded and spun on machines.[1]:41–42
The share of value added by the cotton textile industry in Britain was
2.6% in 1760, 17% in 1801 and 22.4% in 1831. Value added by the
British woollen industry was 14.1% in 1801.
Cotton
Cotton factories in
Britain numbered approximately 900 in 1797. In 1760 approximately
one-third of cotton cloth manufactured in Britain was exported, rising
to two-thirds by 1800. In 1781 cotton spun amounted to 5.1 million
pounds, which increased to 56 million pounds by 1800. In 1800 less
than 0.1% of world cotton cloth was produced on machinery invented in
Britain. In 1788 there were 50,000 spindles in Britain, rising to 7
million over the next 30 years.[30]
Wages in Lancashire, a core region for cottage industry and later
factory spinning and weaving, were about six times those in India in
1770, when overall productivity in Britain was about three times
higher than in India.[30]
Cotton
Parts of India, China, Central America, South America and the
Middle-East have a long history of hand manufacturing cotton textiles,
which became a major industry sometime after 1000 AD. In tropical and
subtropical regions where it was grown, most was grown by small
farmers alongside their food crops and was spun and woven in
households, largely for domestic consumption. In the 15th century
China began to require households to pay part of their taxes in cotton
cloth. By the 17th century almost all Chinese wore cotton clothing.
Almost everywhere cotton cloth could be used as a medium of exchange.
In India a significant amount of cotton textiles were manufactured for
distant markets, often produced by professional weavers. Some
merchants also owned small weaving workshops. India produced a variety
of cotton cloth, some of exceptionally fine quality.[30]
The early Spanish explorers found Native Americans growing a
previously unknown species of good quality cotton: Gossypium hirsutum.
Cotton
Cotton plantations were eventually established in the West Indies and
the Americas which provided Britain with a source of this difficult to
obtain raw material.[30] A strain of cotton seed brought from Mexico
to Natchez, Mississippi, USA in 1806 became the parent genetic
material for over 90% of world cotton production today; it produced
bolls that were three to four times faster to pick.
Trade and textiles
The
Age of Discovery
.jpg/600px-Cantino_planisphere_(1502).jpg)
Age of Discovery was followed by a period of colonialism beginning
around the 16th century. Following the discovery of a trade route to
India around southern Africa by the Portuguese, the Dutch established
the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (abbr. VOC) or Dutch East India
Company and the British founded the East India Company, along with
smaller companies of different nationalities which established trading
posts and employed agents to engage in trade throughout the Indian
Ocean region and between the Indian Ocean region and North Atlantic
Europe. One of the largest segments of this trade was in cotton
textiles, which were purchased in India and sold in Southeast Asia,
including the Indonesian archipelago, where spices were purchased for
sale to Southeast Asia and Europe. By the mid-1760s cloth was over
three-quarters of the East India Company's exports. Indian textiles
were in demand in North Atlantic region of Europe where previously
only wool and linen were available; however, the amount of cotton
goods consumed in Western Europe was minor until the early 19th
century.[30]
European colonial empires at the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Pre-mechanized European textile production
By 1600 Flemish refugees began weaving cotton cloth in English towns
where cottage spinning and weaving of wool and linen was well
established; however, they were left alone by the guilds who did not
consider cotton a threat. Earlier European attempts at cotton spinning
and weaving were in 12th century Italy and 15th century southern
Germany, but these industries eventually ended when the supply of
cotton was cut off. The
Moors
Moors in Spain grew, spun and wove cotton
beginning around the 10th century.[30]
British cloth could not compete with Indian cloth because India's
labor cost was approximately one-fifth to one-sixth that of
Britain's.[31] In 1700 and 1721 the British government passed Calico
Acts in order to protect the domestic woollen and linen industries
from the increasing amounts of cotton fabric imported from
India.[1][32]
The demand for heavier fabric was met by a domestic industry based
around
Lancashire
Lancashire that produced fustian, a cloth with flax warp and
cotton weft. Flax was used for the warp because wheel-spun cotton did
not have sufficient strength, but the resulting blend was not as soft
as 100% cotton and was more difficult to sew.[32]
On the eve of the Industrial Revolution, spinning and weaving were
done in households, for domestic consumption and as a cottage industry
under the putting-out system. Occasionally the work was done in the
workshop of a master weaver. Under the putting-out system, home-based
workers produced under contract to merchant sellers, who often
supplied the raw materials. In the off season the women, typically
farmers' wives, did the spinning and the men did the weaving. Using
the spinning wheel, it took anywhere from four to eight spinners to
supply one hand loom weaver.[1][32][33]:823
Invention
Invention of textile machinery
The flying shuttle patented in 1733 by John Kay, with a number of
subsequent improvements including an important one in 1747, doubled
the output of a weaver, worsening the imbalance between spinning and
weaving. It became widely used around
Lancashire
Lancashire after 1760 when
John's son, Robert, invented the drop box, which facilitated changing
thread colors.[33]:821–22
Lewis Paul
Lewis Paul patented the roller spinning frame and the flyer-and-bobbin
system for drawing wool to a more even thickness. The technology was
developed with the help of John Wyatt of Birmingham. Paul and Wyatt
opened a mill in
Birmingham
Birmingham which used their new rolling machine
powered by a donkey. In 1743 a factory opened in
Northampton
Northampton with 50
spindles on each of five of Paul and Wyatt's machines. This operated
until about 1764. A similar mill was built by
Daniel Bourn
Daniel Bourn in
Leominster, but this burnt down. Both
Lewis Paul
Lewis Paul and Daniel Bourn
patented carding machines in 1748. Based on 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
Richard Arkwright in his water frame and
Samuel Crompton
Samuel Crompton in his
spinning mule.
Model of the spinning jenny in a museum in Wuppertal. Invented by
James Hargreaves
James Hargreaves in 1764, the spinning jenny was one of the
innovations that started the revolution.
In 1764 in the village of Stanhill, Lancashire, James Hargreaves
invented the spinning jenny, which he patented in 1770. It was the
first practical spinning frame with multiple spindles.[34] The jenny
worked in a similar manner to the spinning wheel, by first clamping
down on the fibres, then by drawing them out, followed by
twisting.[35] It was a simple, wooden framed machine that only cost
about £6 for a 40-spindle model in 1792,[36] and was used mainly by
home spinners. The jenny produced a lightly twisted yarn only suitable
for weft, not warp.[33]:825–27
The spinning frame or water frame was developed by Richard Arkwright
who, along with two partners, patented it in 1769. The design was
partly based on a spinning machine built for Thomas High by clockmaker
John Kay, who was hired by Arkwright.[33]:827–30 For each spindle,
the water frame used a series of four pairs of rollers, each operating
at a successively higher rotating speed, to draw out the fibre, which
was then twisted by the spindle. The roller spacing was slightly
longer than the fibre length. Too close a spacing caused the fibres to
break while too distant a spacing caused uneven thread. The top
rollers were leather-covered and loading on the rollers was applied by
a weight. The weights kept the twist from backing up before the
rollers. The bottom rollers were wood and metal, with fluting along
the length. The water frame was able to produce a hard, medium count
thread suitable for warp, finally allowing 100% cotton cloth to be
made in Britain. A horse powered the first factory to use the spinning
frame. Arkwright and his partners used water power at a factory in
Cromford,
Derbyshire
Derbyshire in 1771, giving the invention its name.
The only surviving example of a spinning mule built by the inventor
Samuel Crompton. The mule produced high-quality thread with minimal
labour.
Samuel Crompton's Spinning Mule was introduced in 1779. Mule implies a
hybrid because it was a combination of the spinning jenny and the
water frame, in which the spindles were placed on a carriage, which
went through an operational sequence during which the rollers stopped
while the carriage moved away from the drawing roller to finish
drawing out the fibres as the spindles started rotating.[33]:832
Crompton's mule was able to produce finer thread than hand spinning
and at a lower cost. Mule spun thread was of suitable strength to be
used as warp, and finally allowed Britain to produce highly
competitive yarn in large quantities.[33]:832
Interior of Marshall's Temple Works
Realising that the expiration of the Arkwright patent would greatly
increase the supply of spun cotton and lead to a shortage of weavers,
Edmund Cartwright
Edmund Cartwright developed a vertical power loom which he patented in
1785. In 1776 he patented a two-man operated loom which was more
conventional.[33]:834 Cartwright built two factories; the first burned
down and the second was sabotaged by his workers. Cartwright's loom
design had several flaws, the most serious being thread breakage.
Samuel Horrocks patented a fairly successful loom in 1813. Horock's
loom was improved by Richard Roberts in 1822 and these were produced
in large numbers by Roberts, Hill & Co.[37]
The demand for cotton presented an opportunity to planters in the
Southern United States, who thought upland cotton would be a
profitable crop if a better way could be found to remove the seed. Eli
Whitney responded to the challenge by inventing the inexpensive cotton
gin. With a cotton gin a man could remove seed from as much upland
cotton in one day as would have previously taken a woman working two
months to process at one pound per day.[17]
These advances were capitalised on by entrepreneurs, of whom the best
known is Richard Arkwright. He is credited with a list of inventions,
but these were actually developed by such people as
Thomas Highs
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 and
then water power—which made cotton manufacture a mechanised
industry. 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. Before long steam power was
applied to drive textile machinery.
Manchester
Manchester acquired the nickname
Cottonopolis
Cottonopolis during the early 19th century owing to its sprawl of
textile factories.[38]
Although mechanization dramatically decreased the cost of cotton
cloth, by the mid-19th century machine-woven cloth still could not
equal the quality of hand-woven Indian cloth, in part due to the
fineness of thread made possible by the type of cotton used in India,
which allowed high tread counts. However, the high productivity of
British textile manufacturing allowed coarser grades of British cloth
to undersell hand spun and woven fabric in low-wage India, eventually
destroying the industry.[30]
Wool
The earliest European attempts at mechanized spinning were with wool;
however, wool spinning proved more difficult to mechanize than cotton.
Productivity
Productivity improvement in wool spinning during the Industrial
Revolution was significant, but was far less than that of
cotton.[1][4]
Silk
Lombe's Mill site today, rebuilt as
Derby
Derby Silk Mill
Arguably the first highly mechanised factory was John Lombe's
water-powered silk mill at Derby, operational by 1721. Lombe learned
silk thread manufacturing by taking a job in Italy and acting as an
industrial spy; however, becasue the silk industry there was a closely
guarded secret, the state of the industry there is unknown. Although
Lombe's factory was technically successful, the supply of raw silk
from Italy was cut off to eliminate competition. In order to promote
manufacturing the Crown paid for models of Lombe's machinery which
were exhibited in the Tower of London.[39][40]
Iron
Iron industry
The reverberatory furnace could produce cast iron using mined coal.
The burning coal remained separate from the iron and so did not
contaminate the iron with impurities like sulphur and silica. This
opened the way to increased iron production.
The
Iron
Iron Bridge, Shropshire, England, the world's first bridge
constructed of iron.[41]
Horizontal (lower) and vertical (upper) cross-sections of a single
puddling furnace. A. Fireplace grate; B. Firebricks; C. Cross binders;
D. Fireplace; E. Work door; F. Hearth; G.
Cast iron
Cast iron retaining plates;
H. Bridge wall
UK iron production statistics
Bar iron was the commodity form of iron used as the raw material for
making hardware goods such as nails, wire, hinges, horse shoes, wagon
tires, chains, etc. and for structural shapes. A small amount of bar
iron was converted into steel.
Cast iron
Cast iron was used for pots, stoves and
other items where its brittleness was tolerable. Most cast iron was
refined and converted to bar iron, with substantial losses. Bar iron
was also made by the bloomery process, which was the predominant iron
smelting process until the late 18th century.
In the UK in 1720 there were 20,500 tons of cast iron produced with
charcoal and 400 tons with coke. In 1750 charcoal iron production was
24,500 and coke iron was 2,500 tons. In 1788 the production of
charcoal cast iron was 14,000 tons while coke iron production was
54,000 tons. In 1806 charcoal cast iron production was 7,800 tons and
coke cast iron was 250,000 tons.[27]:125
In 1750 the UK imported 31,200 tons of bar iron and either refined
from cast iron or directly produced 18,800 tons of bar iron using
charcoal and 100 tons using coke. In 1796 the UK was making 125,000
tons of bar iron with coke and 6,400 tons with charcoal; imports were
38,000 tons and exports were 24,600 tons. In 1806 the UK did not
import bar iron but exported 31,500 tons.[27]:125
Iron
Iron process innovations
A major change in the iron industries during the era of the Industrial
Revolution was the replacement of wood and other bio-fuels with coal.
For a given amount of heat, coal required much less labour to mine
than cutting wood and converting it to charcoal,[42] and coal was much
more abundant than wood, supplies of which were becoming scarce before
the enormous increase in iron production that took place in the late
18th century.[1][27]:122 By 1750 coke had generally replaced charcoal
in smelting of copper and lead and was in widespread use in making
glass. In the smelting and refining of iron, coal and coke produced
inferior iron to that made with charcoal because of the coal's sulfur
content. Low sulfur coals were known, but they still contained harmful
amounts. Conversion of coal to coke only slightly reduces the sulfur
content.[27]:122–125 A minority of coals are coking.
Another factor limiting the iron industry before the Industrial
Revolution was the scarcity of water power to power blast bellows.
This was solved by the steam engine.[27]
Use of coal in iron smelting started 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 playing on the ore and charcoal or coke
mixture, reducing the oxide to metal. This has the advantage that
impurities (such as sulphur ash) 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.)
By 1709 Abraham Darby made progress using coke to fuel his blast
furnaces at Coalbrookdale.[43] However, the coke pig iron he made was
not suitable for making wrought iron and was used mostly for the
production of cast iron goods, such as pots and kettles. He had the
advantage over his rivals in that his pots, cast by his patented
process, were thinner and cheaper than theirs.
Coke pig iron was hardly used to produce wrought iron until 1755-56,
when Darby's son
Abraham Darby II built furnaces at
Horsehay
Horsehay and
Ketley
Ketley where low sulfur coal was available (and not far from
Coalbrookdale). These new furnaces were equipped with water-powered
bellows, the water being pumped by Newcomen steam engines. The
Newcomen engines were not attached directly to the blowing cylinders
because the engines would not produce a steady air blast. Abraham
Darby III installed similar steam-pumped, water-powered blowing
cylinders at the Dale Company when he took control in 1768. The Dale
Company used several Newcomen engines to drain its mines and made
parts for engines which it sold throughout the country.[27]:123–125
Steam
Steam engines made the use higher-pressure and volume blast practical;
however, the leather used in bellows was expensive to replace. In 1757
iron master John Wilkinson patented a hydraulic powered blowing engine
for blast furnaces.[44] The blowing cylinder for blast furnaces was
introduced in 1760 and the first blowing cylinder made of cast iron is
believed to be the one used at Carrington in 1768 that was designed by
John Smeaton.[27]:124, 135
Cast iron
Cast iron cylinders for use with a piston
were difficult to manufacture; the cylinders had to be free of holes
and had to be machined smooth and straight to remove any warping.
James Watt
James Watt had great difficulty trying to have a cylinder made for his
first steam engine. In 1774 John Wilkinson, who built a cast iron
blowing cylinder for his iron works, invented a precision boring
machine for boring cylinders. After Wilkinson bored the first
successful cylinder for a Boulton and
Watt steam engine
Watt steam engine in 1776, he
was given an exclusive contract for providing cylinders.[17] After
Watt developed a rotary steam engine in 1782, they were widely applied
to blowing, hammering, rolling and slitting.[27]:124
The solutions to the sulfur problem were the addition of sufficient
limestone to the furnace to force sulfur into the slag and the use of
low sulfur coal. Use of lime or limestone required higher furnace
temperatures to form a free-flowing slag. The increased furnace
temperature made possible by improved blowing also increased the
capacity of blast furnaces and allowed for increased furnace
height.[27]:123–125 In addition to lower cost and greater
availability, coke had other important advantages over charcoal in
that it was harder and made the column of materials (iron ore, fuel,
slag) flowing down the blast furnace more porous and did not crush in
the much taller furnaces of the late 19th century.[45]
As cast iron was became cheaper and widely available, it began being a
structural material for bridges and buildings. A famous early example
was the
Iron
Iron Bridge built in 1778 with cast iron produced by Abraham
Darby III.[41] However, most cast iron was converted to wrought iron,
which was turned into hardware items such as nails, wire, chains,
agricultural implements, tools and wagon tires.
Europe relied on the bloomery for most of its wrought iron until the
large scale production of cast iron. Conversion of cast iron was done
in a finery forge, as it long had been. An improved refining process
known as potting and stamping was developed, but this was superseded
by Henry Cort's puddling process. Cort developed two significant iron
manufacturing processes: rolling in 1783 and puddling in 1784.[1]:91
Puddling produced a structural grade iron at a relatively low cost.
Puddling was a means of decarburizing molten pig iron by slow
oxidation in a reverberatory furnace by manually stirring it with a
long rod. The decarburized iron, having a higher melting point than
cast iron, was raked into globs by the puddler. When the glob a large
enough the puddler would remove it. Puddling was backbreaking and
extremely hot work. Few puddlers lived to be 40.[46] Because puddling
was done in a reverberatory furnace, coal or coke could be used as
fuel. The puddling process continued to be used until the late 19th
century when iron was being displaced by steel. Because puddling
required human skill in sensing the iron globs, it was never
successfully mechanised. Rolling was an important part of the puddling
process because the grooved rollers expelled most of the molten slag
and consolidated the mass of hot wrought iron. Rolling was 15 times
faster at this than a trip hammer. A different use of rolling, which
was done at lower temperatures than that for expelling slag, was in
the production of iron sheets, and later structural shapes such as
beams, angles and rails.
The puddling process was improved in 1818 by Baldwyn Rogers, who
replaced some of the sand lining on the reverberatory furnace bottom
with iron oxide.[47] In 1838 John Hall patented the use of roasted tap
cinder (iron silicate) for the furnace bottom, greatly reducing the
loss of iron through increased slag caused by a sand lined bottom. The
tap cinder also tied up some phosphorus, but this was not understood
at the time.[27]:166 Hall's process also used iron scale or rust,
which reacted with carbon in the molten iron. Hall's process, called
wet puddling, reduced losses of iron with the slag from almost 50% to
around 8%.[1]:93
Puddling became widely used after 1800. Up to that time British iron
manufacturers had used considerable amounts of iron imported from
Sweden and Russia to supplement domestic supplies. Because of the
increased British production, imports began to decline in 1785 and by
the 1790s Britain eliminated imports and became a net exporter of bar
iron.
Hot blast, patented by
James Beaumont Neilson
James Beaumont Neilson in 1828, was the most
important development of the 19th century for saving energy in making
pig iron. By using waste exhaust heat to preheat combustion air, the
amount of fuel to make a unit of pig iron was reduced at first by
between one-third using coal or two-thirds using coke;[48] however,
the efficiency gains continued as the technology improved.[49] Hot
blast also raised the operating temperature of furnaces, increasing
their capacity. Using less coal or coke meant introducing fewer
impurities into the pig iron. This meant that lower quality coal or
anthracite could be used in areas where coking coal was unavailable or
too expensive;[50] however, by the end of the 19th century
transportation costs fell considerably.
Shortly before the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution 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 cutting edge tools and for
springs.
Benjamin Huntsman
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 a number of industries,
such as those making nails, hinges, wire and other hardware items. The
development of machine tools allowed better working of iron, causing
it to be increasingly used in the rapidly growing machinery and engine
industries.
Steam
Steam power
Main article:
Steam power
Steam power during the Industrial Revolution
A Watt steam engine.
James Watt
James Watt transformed the steam engine from a
reciprocating motion that was used for pumping to a rotating motion
suited to industrial applications. Watt and others significantly
improved the efficiency of the steam engine.
The development of the stationary steam engine was an important
element of the Industrial Revolution; however, during the early period
of the Industrial Revolution, most industrial power was supplied by
water and wind. In Britain by 1800 an estimated 10,000 horsepower was
being supplied by steam. By 1815 steam power had grown to
210,000 hp.[51]
The first commercially successful industrial use of steam power was
due to
Thomas Savery
Thomas Savery in 1698. He constructed and patented in London a
low-lift combined vacuum and pressure water pump, that generated about
one horsepower (hp) and was used in numerous water works and in a few
mines (hence its "brand name", The Miner's Friend). Savery's pump was
economical in small horsepower ranges, but was prone to boiler
explosions in larger sizes.
Savery pumps continued to be produced
until the late 18th century.
The first successful piston steam engine was introduced by Thomas
Newcomen before 1712. A number of Newcomen engines were installed in
Britain for draining hitherto unworkable deep mines, with the engine
on the surface; these were large machines, requiring a significant
amount of capital to build, and produced upwards of 5 hp
(3.7 kW). They were also used to power municipal water supply
pumps. They were extremely inefficient by modern standards, but when
located where coal was cheap at pit heads, opened up a great expansion
in coal mining by allowing mines to go deeper. Despite their
disadvantages, Newcomen engines were reliable and easy to maintain and
continued to be used in the coalfields until the early decades of the
19th century. By 1729, when Newcomen died, his engines had spread
(first) to Hungary in 1722, Germany, Austria, and Sweden. A total of
110 are known to have been built by 1733 when the joint patent
expired, of which 14 were abroad. In the 1770s the engineer John
Smeaton built some very large examples and introduced a number of
improvements. A total of 1,454 engines had been built by 1800.[52]
Newcomen's steam-powered atmospheric engine was the first practical
piston steam engine. Subsequent steam engines were to power the
Industrial Revolution.
A fundamental change in working principles was brought about by
Scotsman James Watt. With financial support from his business partner
Englishman Matthew Boulton, he had succeeded by 1778 in perfecting his
steam engine, which incorporated a series of radical improvements,
notably the closing off of the upper part of the cylinder, thereby
making the low-pressure steam drive the top of the piston instead of
the atmosphere, use of a steam jacket and the celebrated separate
steam condenser chamber. The separate condenser did away with the
cooling water that had been injected directly into the cylinder, which
cooled the cylinder and wasted steam. Likewise, the steam jacket kept
steam from condensing in the cylinder, also improving efficiency.
These improvements increased engine efficiency so that Boulton &
Watts engines used only 20–25% as much coal per horsepower-hour as
Newcomen's.
Boulton and Watt
Boulton and Watt opened the
Soho Foundry
Soho Foundry for the
manufacture of such engines in 1795.
By 1783 the
Watt steam engine
Watt steam engine had been fully developed into a
double-acting rotative type, which meant that it could be used to
directly drive the rotary machinery of a factory or mill. Both of
Watt's basic engine types were commercially very successful, and by
1800, the firm Boulton & Watt had constructed 496 engines, with
164 driving reciprocating pumps, 24 serving blast furnaces, and 308
powering mill machinery; most of the engines generated from 5 to
10 hp (3.7 to 7.5 kW).
Until about 1800 the most common pattern of steam engine was the beam
engine, built as an integral part of a stone or brick engine-house,
but soon various patterns of self-contained rotative engines (readily
removable, but not on wheels) were developed, such as the table
engine. Around the start of the 19th century, at which time the
Boulton and Watt
Boulton and Watt patent expired, the Cornish engineer Richard
Trevithick and the American
Oliver Evans
.jpg/440px-Oliver_Evans_(Engraving_by_W.G.Jackman,_cropped).jpg)
Oliver Evans began to construct
higher-pressure non-condensing steam engines, exhausting against the
atmosphere. High pressure yielded an engine and boiler compact enough
to be used on mobile road and rail locomotives and steam boats.
The development of machine tools, such as the engine lathe, planing,
milling 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.
Small industrial power requirements continued to be provided by animal
and human muscle until widespread electrification in the early 20th
century. These included crank-powered, treadle-powered and
horse-powered workshop and light industrial machinery.[53]
Machine
Machine tools
Main article:
Machine
Machine tool
See also: Interchangeable parts
Maudslay's famous early screw-cutting lathes of circa 1797 and 1800
The Middletown milling machine of circa 1818, associated with Robert
Johnson and Simeon North
Pre-industrial machinery was built by various craftsmen –
millwrights built water and windmills, carpenters made wooden framing,
and smiths and turners made metal parts. Wooden components 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
Industrial Revolution progressed, machines with metal parts and frames
became more common. Other important uses of metal parts were in
firearms and threaded fasteners, such as machine screws, bolts and
nuts. There was also the need for precision in making parts. Precision
would allow better working machinery, interchangeability of parts and
standardization of threaded fasteners.
The demand for metal parts led to the development of several machine
tools. 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.
Before the advent of machine tools, metal was worked manually using
the basic hand tools of hammers, files, scrapers, saws and chisels.
Consequently, the use of metal machine parts was kept to a minimum.
Hand methods of production were very laborious and costly and
precision was difficult to achieve.[29][17]
The first large precision machine tool was the cylinder boring machine
invented by John Wilkinson in 1774. It used for boring the
large-diameter cylinders on early steam engines. Wilkinson's boring
machine differed from earlier cantilevered machines used for boring
cannon in that the cutting tool was mounted on a beam that ran through
the cylinder being bored and was supported outside on both ends.[17]
The planing machine, the milling machine and the shaping machine were
developed in the early decades of the 19th century. Although the
milling machine was invented at this time, it was not developed as a
serious workshop tool until somewhat later in the 19th
century.[29][17]
Henry Maudslay, who trained a school of machine tool makers early in
the 19th century, was a mechanic with superior ability who had been
employed at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich. He worked as an apprentice in
the Royal Gun Foundry of Jan Verbruggen. In 1774
Jan Verbruggen
Jan Verbruggen had
installed a horizontal boring machine in
Woolwich
Woolwich which was the first
industrial size
Lathe
Lathe in the UK. Maudslay was hired away by Joseph
Bramah for the production of high-security metal locks that required
precision craftsmanship. Bramah patented a lathe that had similarities
to the slide rest lathe. Maudslay perfected the slide rest lathe,
which could cut machine screws of different thread pitches by using
changeable gears between the spindle and the lead screw. Before its
invention screws could not be cut to any precision using various
earlier lathe designs, some of which copied from a
template.[17][33]:392–95 The slide rest lathe was called one of
history's most important inventions. Although it was not entirely
Maudslay's idea, he was the first person to build a functional lathe
using a combination of known innovations of the lead screw, slide rest
and change gears.[17]:31, 36
Maudslay left Bramah's employment and set up his own shop. He was
engaged to build the machinery for making ships' pulley blocks for the
Royal Navy
Royal Navy in the Portsmouth Block Mills. These machines 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.[17]
James Fox of
Derby
Derby had a healthy export trade in machine tools for the
first third of the century, as did
Matthew Murray
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.
The impact of machine tools during the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution was not
that great because other than firearms, threaded fasteners and a few
other industries there were few mass-produced metal parts. The
techniques to make mass-produced metal parts made with sufficient
precision to be interchangeable is largely attributed to a program of
the U.S. Department of War which perfected interchangeable parts for
firearms in the early 19th century.[29]
In the half century following the invention of the fundamental machine
tools the machine industry became the largest industrial sector of the
U.S. economy, by value added.[54]
Chemicals
The large-scale production of chemicals was an important development
during the Industrial Revolution. The first of these was the
production of sulphuric 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 making a
small amount each time, he was able to make around 100 pounds
(50 kg) in each of the chambers, at least a tenfold increase.
The production of an alkali on a large scale became an important goal
as well, and
Nicolas Leblanc
Nicolas Leblanc succeeded in 1791 in introducing a method
for the production of sodium carbonate. The
Leblanc process
Leblanc process was a
reaction of sulphuric acid with sodium chloride to give sodium
sulphate and hydrochloric acid. The sodium sulphate was heated with
limestone (calcium carbonate) and coal to give a mixture of sodium
carbonate and calcium sulphide. Adding water separated the soluble
sodium carbonate from the calcium sulphide. The process produced a
large amount of pollution (the hydrochloric acid was initially vented
to the air, and calcium sulphide was a useless waste product).
Nonetheless, this synthetic soda ash proved economical compared to
that from burning specific plants (barilla) or from kelp, which were
the previously dominant sources of soda ash,[55] and also to potash
(potassium carbonate) produced from hardwood ashes.
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 sulphuric acid included pickling (removing
rust) iron and steel, and for bleaching cloth.
The development of bleaching powder (calcium hypochlorite) by Scottish
chemist
Charles Tennant
Charles Tennant in about 1800, based on the discoveries of
French chemist Claude Louis Berthollet, revolutionised 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.
After 1860 the focus on chemical innovation was in dyestuffs, and
Germany took world leadership, building a strong chemical
industry.[56] Aspiring chemists flocked to German universities in the
1860–1914 era to learn the latest techniques. British scientists by
contrast, lacked research universities and did not train advanced
students; instead, the practice was to hire German-trained
chemists.[57]
Cement
The
Thames Tunnel
Thames Tunnel (opened 1843).
Cement
Cement was used in the world's first underwater tunnel.
In 1824 Joseph Aspdin, a British bricklayer turned builder, patented a
chemical process for making portland cement which was an important
advance in the building trades. This process involves sintering a
mixture of clay and limestone to about 1,400 °C
(2,552 °F), then grinding it into a fine powder which is then
mixed with water, sand and gravel to produce concrete. Portland cement
was used by the famous English engineer
Marc Isambard Brunel
Marc Isambard Brunel several
years later when constructing the Thames Tunnel.[58]
Cement
Cement was used
on a large scale in the construction of the
London sewerage system
London sewerage system a
generation later.
Gas lighting
Main article: Gas lighting
Another major industry of the later
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution was gas
lighting. Though others made a similar innovation elsewhere, the
large-scale introduction of this was the work of William Murdoch, an
employee of Boulton & Watt, the
Birmingham
Birmingham steam engine pioneers.
The process consisted of the large-scale gasification of coal in
furnaces, the purification of the gas (removal of sulphur, ammonia,
and heavy hydrocarbons), and its storage and distribution. The first
gas lighting utilities were established in London between 1812 and
1820. They soon became one of the major consumers of coal in the UK.
Gas lighting
Gas lighting affected social and industrial organisation because it
allowed factories and stores to remain open longer than with tallow
candles or oil. Its introduction allowed nightlife to flourish in
cities and towns as interiors and streets could be lighted on a larger
scale than before.
Glass making
Main article: Glass production
The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace held the Great Exhibition of 1851
A new method of producing glass, known as the cylinder process, was
developed in Europe during the early 19th century. In 1832 this
process was used by the
Chance Brothers
Chance Brothers to create sheet glass. They
became the leading producers of window and plate glass. This
advancement allowed for larger panes of glass to be created without
interruption, thus freeing up the space planning in interiors as well
as the fenestration of buildings.
The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace is the supreme
example of the use of sheet glass in a new and innovative structure.
Paper
Paper machine
Main article:
Paper
Paper machine
A machine for making a continuous sheet of paper on a loop of wire
fabric was patented in 1798 by Nicholas Louis Robert who worked for
Saint-Léger Didot
Saint-Léger Didot family in France. The paper machine is known as a
Fourdrinier after the financiers, brothers Sealy and Henry
Fourdrinier, who were stationers in London. Although greatly improved
and with many variations, the Fourdriner machine is the predominant
means of paper production today.
The method of continuous production demonstrated by the paper machine
influenced the development of continuous rolling of iron and later
steel and other continuous production processes.[59]
Agriculture
Main article: British Agricultural Revolution
The
British Agricultural Revolution
British Agricultural Revolution is considered one of the causes of
the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution because improved agricultural productivity
freed up workers to work in other sectors of the economy.[60] However,
per-capita food supply in Europe was stagnant or declining and did not
improve in some parts of Europe until the late 18th century.[61]
Industrial technologies that affected farming included the seed drill,
the Dutch plough, which contained iron parts, and the threshing
machine.
Jethro Tull invented an improved seed drill in 1701. It was a
mechanical seeder which distributed seeds evenly across a plot of land
and planted them at the correct depth. This was important because the
yield of seeds harvested to seeds planted at that time was around four
or five. Tull's seed drill was very expensive and not very reliable
and therefore did not have much of an impact. Good quality seed drills
were not produced until the mid 18th century.[62]
Joseph Foljambe's Rotherham plough of 1730 was the first commercially
successful iron plough.[63][64][65][66] The threshing machine,
invented by
Andrew Meikle
Andrew Meikle in 1784, displaced hand threshing with a
flail, a laborious job that took about one-quarter of agricultural
labour.[67]:286 It took several decades to diffuse[68] and was the
final straw for many farm labourers, who faced near starvation,
leading to the 1830 agricultural rebellion of the Swing Riots.
Machine
Machine tools and metalworking techniques developed during the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution eventually resulted in precision manufacturing
techniques in the late 19th century for mass-producing agricultural
equipment, such as reapers, binders and combine harvesters.[29]
Mining
Coal
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 or drift mine driven into the side of a
hill.
Shaft mining
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 pump by
Savery in 1698 and the Newcomen
steam engine in 1712 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 John Smeaton's improvements to the
Newcomen engine followed by James Watt's more efficient steam engines
from the 1770s reduced the fuel costs of engines, making mines more
profitable. The Cornish engine, developed in the 1810s, was much more
efficient than the Watt steam engine.
Coal
Coal mining was very dangerous owing to the presence of firedamp in
many coal seams. Some degree of safety was provided by the safety lamp
which was invented in 1816 by Sir
Humphry Davy
Humphry Davy and independently by
George Stephenson. However, the lamps proved a false dawn because they
became unsafe very quickly and provided a weak light. Firedamp
explosions continued, often setting off coal dust explosions, so
casualties grew during the entire 19th century. Conditions of work
were very poor, with a high casualty rate from rock falls.
Transportation
Main article: Transport during the British Industrial Revolution
See also:
Productivity
Productivity improving technologies (economic history)
§ Infrastructures
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. Wagon ways were used for conveying coal to rivers
for further shipment, but canals had not yet been widely constructed.
Animals supplied all of the motive power on land, with sails providing
the motive power on the sea. The first horse railways were introduced
toward the end of the 18th century, with steam locomotives being
introduced in the early decades of the 19th century. Improving sailing
technologies boosted average sailing speed 50% between 1750 and
1830.[69]
The
Industrial Revolution
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.
Canals and improved waterways
Main article: History of the British canal system
The Bridgewater Canal, famous because of its commercial success,
crossing the
Manchester
Manchester Ship Canal, one of the last canals to be
built.
Before and during the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution navigation on several
British rivers was improved by removing obstructions, straightening
curves, widening and deepening and building navigation locks. Britain
had over 1000 miles of navigable rivers and streams by 1750.[1]:46
Canals and waterways allowed bulk materials to be economically
transported long distances inland. This was because a horse could pull
a barge with a load dozens of times larger than the load that could be
drawn in a cart.[33][70]
Building of canals dates to ancient times. The Grand
Canal
Canal in China,
"the world's largest artificial waterway and oldest canal still in
existence," parts of which were started between the 6th and 4th
centuries BC, is 1,121 miles (1,804 km) long and links Hangzhou
with Beijing.[71]
In the UK, canals began to be built in the late 18th century to link
the major manufacturing centres across the country. Known for its huge
commercial success, the
Bridgewater Canal
Bridgewater Canal in North West England, which
opened in 1761 and was mostly funded by The 3rd Duke of Bridgewater.
From
Worsley
Worsley to the rapidly growing town of
Manchester
Manchester its
construction cost £168,000 (£22,589,130 as of 2013[update]),[72][73]
but its advantages over land and river transport meant that within a
year of its opening in 1761, the price of coal in
Manchester
Manchester fell by
about half.[74] This success helped inspire a period of intense canal
building, known as
Canal
Canal Mania.[75] New canals were hastily built in
the aim of replicating the commercial success of the Bridgewater
Canal, the most notable being the
Leeds and Liverpool Canal
Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the
Thames and Severn Canal
Thames and Severn Canal which opened in 1774 and 1789 respectively.
By the 1820s a national network was in existence.
Canal
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. The last major canal to be built in the United Kingdom
was the
Manchester
Manchester Ship Canal, which upon opening in 1894 was the
largest ship canal in the world,[76] and opened
Manchester
Manchester as a port.
However it never achieved the commercial success its sponsors had
hoped for and signalled canals as a dying mode of transport in an age
dominated by railways, which were quicker and often cheaper.
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
Construction of the first macadam road in the United States (1823). In
the foreground, workers are breaking stones "so as not to exceed 6
ounces in weight or to pass a two-inch ring".[77]
France was known for having an excellent system of roads at the time
of the Industrial Revolution.[70][78]
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 a turnpike trust. New engineered roads were built by
John Metcalf,
Thomas Telford
Thomas Telford and most notably John McAdam, with the
first 'macadamised' stretch of road being Marsh Road at Ashton Gate,
Bristol
Bristol in 1816.[79] 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 horse. Stagecoaches
carried the rich, and the less wealthy could pay to ride on carriers
carts.
Railways
Main article: History of rail transport in Great Britain
Painting depicting the opening of the
Liverpool
Liverpool and
Manchester
Manchester Railway
in 1830, the first inter-city railway in the world and which spawned
Railway Mania
Railway Mania due to its success.
Reducing friction was one of the major reasons for the success of
railroads compared to wagons. This was demonstrated on an iron plate
covered wooden tramway in 1805 at Croydon, England.
“A good horse on an ordinary turnpike road can draw two thousand
pounds, or one ton. A party of gentlemen were invited to witness the
experiment, that the superiority of the new road might be established
by ocular demonstration. Twelve wagons were loaded with stones, till
each wagon weighed three tons, and the wagons were fastened together.
A horse was then attached, which drew the wagons with ease, six miles
in two hours, having stopped four times, in order to show he had the
power of starting, as well as drawing his great load.”[80]
Railways were made practical by the widespread introduction of
inexpensive puddled iron after 1800, the rolling mill for making
rails, and the development of the high-pressure steam engine also
around 1800.
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 wagon 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 when improvements to pig and
wrought iron production were lowering costs. See: Metallurgy
Steam
Steam locomotives began being built after the introduction of
high-pressure steam engines after the expiration of the Boulton and
Watt patent in 1800. High-pressure engines exhausted used steam to the
atmosphere, doing away with the condenser and cooling water. They were
also much lighter weight and smaller in size for a given horsepower
than the stationary condensing engines. A few of these early
locomotives were used in mines. Steam-hauled public railways began
with the
Stockton and Darlington Railway
Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825.
The rapid introduction of railways followed the 1829 Rainhill Trials,
which demonstrated Robert Stephenson's successful locomotive design
and the 1828 development of Hot blast, which dramatically reduced the
fuel consumption of making iron and increased the capacity the blast
furnace.
On 15 September 1830, the
Liverpool
Liverpool and
Manchester
Manchester Railway was opened,
the first inter-city railway in the world and was attended by Prime
Minister, the Duke of Wellington.[81] The railway was engineered by
Joseph Locke
Joseph Locke and George Stephenson, linked the rapidly expanding
industrial town of
Manchester
Manchester with the port town of Liverpool. The
opening was marred by problems, due to the primitive nature of the
technology being employed, however problems were gradually ironed out
and the railway became highly successful, transporting passengers and
freight. The success of the inter-city railway, particularly in the
transport of freight and commodities, led to Railway Mania.
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.
Other developments
Other developments included more efficient water wheels, based on
experiments conducted by the British engineer John Smeaton[82] the
beginnings of a machine industry[17][83] and the rediscovery of
concrete (based on hydraulic lime mortar) by John Smeaton, which had
been lost for 1300 years.[84]
Social effects
Main article: Life in
Great Britain
Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution
Factory
Factory system
Main article:
Factory
Factory system
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, most of the workforce was employed
in agriculture, either as self-employed farmers as landowners or
tenants, or as landless agricultural labourers. It was common for
families in various parts of the world to spin yarn, weave cloth and
make their own clothing. Households also spun and wove for market
production. At the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution India, China
and regions of Iraq and elsewhere in Asia and the Middle East produced
most of the world's cotton cloth while Europeans produced wool and
linen goods.
In Britain by the 16th century the putting-out system, by which
farmers and townspeople produced goods for market in their homes,
often described as cottage industry, was being practiced. Typical
putting out system goods included spinning and weaving. Merchant
capitalist typically provided the raw materials, paid workers by the
piece, and were responsible for the sale of the goods. Embezzlement of
supplies by workers and poor quality were common problems. The
logistical effort in procuring and distributing raw materials and
picking up finished goods were also limitations of the putting out
system.[85]
Some early spinning and weaving machinery, such as a 40 spindle jenny
for about six pounds in 1792, was affordable for cottagers.[86] Later
machinery such as spinning frames, spinning mules and power looms were
expensive (especially if water powered), giving rise to capitalist
ownership of factories.
The majority of textile factory workers during the Industrial
Revolution were unmarried women and children, including many orphans.
They typically worked for 12 to 14 hours per day with only Sundays
off. It was common for women take factory jobs seasonally during slack
periods of farm work. Lack of adequate transportation, long hours and
poor pay made it difficult to recruit and maintain workers.[30] Many
workers, such as displaced farmers and agricultural workers, who had
nothing but their labour to sell, became factory workers out of
necessity. (See: British Agricultural Revolution, Threshing machine)
The change in the social relationship of the factory worker compared
to farmers and cottagers was viewed unfavourably by Karl Marx,
however, he recognized the increase in productivity made possible by
technology.[87]
Standards of living
Some economists, such as Robert E. Lucas, Jr., say that the real
impact of the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution was that "for the first time in
history, the living standards of the masses of ordinary people have
begun to undergo sustained growth ... Nothing remotely like this
economic behaviour is mentioned by the classical economists, even as a
theoretical possibility."[5] Others, however, argue that while growth
of the economy's overall productive powers was unprecedented during
the Industrial Revolution, living standards for the majority of the
population did not grow meaningfully until the late 19th and 20th
centuries, and that in many ways workers' living standards declined
under early capitalism: for instance, studies have shown that real
wages in Britain only increased 15% between the 1780s and 1850s, and
that life expectancy in Britain did not begin to dramatically increase
until the 1870s.[6][7]
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.[88]
The effects on living conditions the industrial revolution have been
very controversial, and were hotly debated by economic and social
historians from the 1950s to the 1980s.[89] A series of 1950s essays
by
Henry Phelps Brown and Sheila V. Hopkins later set the academic
consensus that the bulk of the population, that was at the bottom of
the social ladder, suffered severe reductions in their living
standards.[89] During 1813–1913, there was a significant increase in
worker wages.[90][91][92]
Food and nutrition
Main article: British Agricultural Revolution
Chronic hunger and malnutrition were the norm for the majority of the
population of the world including Britain and France, until the late
19th century. Until about 1750, in large part due to malnutrition,
life expectancy in France was about 35 years and about 40 years in
Britain. The United States population of the time was adequately fed,
much taller on average and had life expectancy of 45–50 years
although U.S. life expectancy declined by a few years by the mid 19th
century.[93]
Food supply in
Great Britain
Great Britain was adversely affected by the Corn Laws
(1815-1846). The Corn Laws, which imposed tariffs on imported grain,
were enacted to keep prices high in order to benefit domestic
producers. The
Corn Laws
Corn Laws were repealed in the early years of the Great
Irish Famine.
The initial technologies of the Industrial Revolution, such as
mechanized textiles, iron and coal, did little, if anything, to lower
food prices.[61] In Britain and the Netherlands, food supply increased
before the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution due to better agricultural practices;
however, population grew too, as noted by Thomas
Malthus.[1][67][94][95] This condition is called the Malthusian trap,
and it finally started to overcome by transportation improvements,
such as canals, improved roads and steamships.[96] Railroads and
steamships were introduced near the end of the Industrial
Revolution.[67]
Housing
The very rapid growth in population in the 19th century in the cities
included the new industrial and manufacturing cities, as well as
service centers such as Edinburgh and London.[97] The critical factor
was financing, which was handled by building societies that dealt
directly with large contracting firms.[98][99] Private renting from
housing landlords was the dominant tenure. P. Kemp says this was
usually of advantage to tenants.[100] People moved in so rapidly that
there was not enough capital to build adequate housing for everyone,
so low-income newcomers squeezed into increasingly overcrowded slums.
Clean water, sanitation, and public health facilities were inadequate;
the death rate was high, especially infant mortality, and tuberculosis
among young adults.
Cholera
Cholera from polluted water and typhoid were
endemic. Unlike rural areas, there were no famines such as devastated
Ireland in the 1840s.[101][102][103]
A large exposé literature grew up condemning the unhealthy
conditions. By far the most famous publication was by one of the
founders of the Socialist movement, The Condition of the Working Class
in England in 1844
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels described backstreet sections of
Manchester
Manchester and other mill towns, where people lived in crude shanties
and shacks, some not completely enclosed, some with dirt floors. These
shanty towns had narrow walkways between irregularly shaped lots and
dwellings. There were no sanitary facilities. Population density was
extremely high.[104] Not everyone lived in such poor conditions. The
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution also created a middle class of businessmen,
clerks, foremen and engineers who lived in much better conditions.
Conditions improved over the course of the 19th century due to new
public health acts regulating things such as sewage, hygiene and home
construction. In the introduction of his 1892 edition, Engels notes
that most of the conditions he wrote about in 1844 had been greatly
improved. For example, the
Public Health Act 1875
.svg/280px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_(1837-1952).svg.png)
Public Health Act 1875 led to the more
sanitary byelaw terraced house.
Sanitation
In
The Condition of the Working Class in England
The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 Friedrich
Engels described how untreated sewage created awful odors and turned
the rivers green in industrial cities.
In 1854
John Snow
John Snow traced a cholera outbreak in Soho to fecal
contamination of a public water well by a home cesspit. Snow's
findings that cholera could be spread by contaminated water took some
years to be accepted, but his work led to fundamental changes in the
design of public water and waste systems.
Water supply
Pre-industrial water supply relied on gravity systems and pumping of
water was done by water wheels. Pipes were typically made of wood.
Steam
Steam powered pumps and iron pipes allowed the widespread piping of
water to horse watering troughs and households.[78]
Increase in literacy
The invention of the paper machine and the application of steam power
to the industrial processes of printing supported a massive expansion
of newspaper and popular book publishing, which contributed to rising
literacy and demands for mass political participation.
Clothing and consumer goods
Wedgwood
Wedgwood tea and coffee service
Consumers benefited from falling prices for clothing and household
articles such as cast iron cooking utensils, and in the following
decades, stoves for cooking and space heating. Coffee, tea, sugar,
tobacco and chocolate became affordable to many in Europe. Watches and
household clocks became popular consumer items.
Meeting the demands of the consumer revolution and growth in wealth of
the middle classes in Britain, potter and entrepreneur Josiah
Wedgwood, founder of
Wedgwood
Wedgwood fine china and porcelain, created goods
such as tableware, which was starting to become a common feature on
dining tables.[105]
Population increase
The
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution was the first period in history during which
there was a simultaneous increase in both population and per capita
income.[106]
According to Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore, the population of
England and Wales, which had remained steady at six million from 1700
to 1740, rose dramatically after 1740. The population of England had
more than doubled from 8.3 million in 1801 to 16.8 million in 1850
and, by 1901, had nearly doubled again to 30.5 million.[107] Improved
conditions led to the population of Britain increasing from 10 million
to 40 million in the 1800s.[108][109] Europe's population increased
from about 100 million in 1700 to 400 million by 1900.[110]
Urbanization
The growth of modern industry since the late 18th century led to
massive urbanisation and the rise of new great cities, first in Europe
and then in other regions, as new opportunities brought huge numbers
of migrants from rural communities into urban areas. In 1800, only 3%
of the world's population lived in cities,[111] compared to nearly 50%
today (the beginning of the 21st century).[112]
Manchester
Manchester had a
population of 10,000 in 1717, but by 1911 it had burgeoned to 2.3
million.[113]
Impact on women and family life
Women's historians have debated the effect of the Industrial
Revolution and capitalism generally on the status of women.[114][115]
Taking a pessimistic side,
Alice Clark argued that when capitalism
arrived in 17th century England, it lowered the status of women as
they lost much of their economic importance. Clark argues that in
16th-century England, women were engaged in many aspects of industry
and agriculture. The home was a central unit of production and women
played a vital role in running farms, and in some trades and landed
estates. Their useful economic roles gave them a sort of equality with
their husbands. However, Clark argues, as capitalism expanded in the
17th century, there was more and more division of labour with the
husband taking paid labour jobs outside the home, and the wife reduced
to unpaid household work. Middle- and upper-class women were confined
to an idle domestic existence, supervising servants; lower-class women
were forced to take poorly paid jobs. Capitalism, therefore, had a
negative effect on powerful women.[116]
In a more positive interpretation,
Ivy Pinchbeck argues that
capitalism created the conditions for women's emancipation.[117] Tilly
and Scott have emphasised the continuity in the status of women,
finding three stages in English history. In the pre-industrial era,
production was mostly for home use and women produce much of the needs
of the households. The second stage was the "family wage economy" of
early industrialisation; the entire family depended on the collective
wages of its members, including husband, wife and older children. The
third or modern stage is the "family consumer economy," in which the
family is the site of consumption, and women are employed in large
numbers in retail and clerical jobs to support rising standards of
consumption.[118]
Labour conditions
Social structure and working conditions
In terms of social structure, the
Industrial Revolution
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. As late as the year
1900, most industrial workers in the United States still worked a
10-hour day (12 hours in the steel industry), yet earned from 20% to
40% less than the minimum deemed necessary for a decent life;[119]
however, most workers in textiles, which was by far the leading
industry in terms of employment, were women and children.[30] Also,
harsh working conditions were prevalent long before the Industrial
Revolution took place.
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.[120]
Factories and urbanisation
Main article:
Factory
Factory system
Manchester, England ("Cottonopolis"), pictured in 1840, showing the
mass of factory chimneys
Industrialisation led to the creation of the factory. The factory
system contributed to the growth of urban areas, as large numbers of
workers migrated into the cities in search of work in the factories.
Nowhere was this better illustrated than the mills and associated
industries of Manchester, nicknamed "Cottonopolis", and the world's
first industrial city.[121]
Manchester
Manchester experienced a six-times
increase in its population between 1771 and 1831. Bradford grew by 50%
every ten years between 1811 and 1851 and by 1851 only 50% of the
population of Bradford was actually born there.[122]
For much of the 19th century, production was done in small mills,
which were typically water-powered and built to serve local needs.
Later, each factory would have its own steam engine and a chimney to
give an efficient draft through its boiler.
In other industries, the transition to factory production was not so
divisive. Some industrialists themselves tried to improve factory and
living conditions for their workers. One of the earliest such
reformers was Robert Owen, known for his pioneering efforts in
improving conditions for workers at the
New Lanark
New Lanark mills, and often
regarded as one of the key thinkers of the early socialist movement.
By 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
Wedgwood and
Matthew Boulton
Matthew Boulton (whose Soho
Manufactory was completed in 1766) were other prominent early
industrialists, who employed the factory system.
Child labour
See also:
Child labour
._Child_Labor,_Cranberry_Bog,_1939.jpg/440px-Arthur_Rothstein_(American,_1915-1985)._Child_Labor,_Cranberry_Bog,_1939.jpg)
Child labour § The Industrial Revolution
A young "drawer" pulling a coal tub along a mine gallery.[123] In
Britain laws passed in 1842 and 1844 improved mine working conditions.
The
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution led to a population increase but the chances
of surviving childhood did not improve throughout the Industrial
Revolution, although infant mortality rates were reduced
markedly.[88][124] There was still limited opportunity for education
and children were expected to work. Employers could pay a child less
than an adult even though their productivity was comparable; there was
no need for strength to operate an industrial machine, and since the
industrial system was completely new, there were no experienced adult
labourers. This made child labour the labour of choice for
manufacturing in the early phases of the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution between
the 18th and 19th centuries. In England and Scotland in 1788,
two-thirds of the workers in 143 water-powered cotton mills were
described as children.[125]
Child labour
Child labour existed before the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution but with the
increase in population and education it became more visible. Many
children were forced to work in relatively bad conditions for much
lower pay than their elders,[126] 10–20% of an adult male's
wage.[127] Children as young as four were employed.[127] Beatings and
long hours were common, with some child coal miners and hurriers
working from 4 am until 5 pm.[127] Conditions were dangerous, with
some children killed when they dozed off and fell into the path of the
carts, while others died from gas explosions.[127] Many children
developed lung cancer and other diseases and died before the age of
25.[127]
Workhouses
Workhouses would sell orphans and abandoned children as
"pauper apprentices", working without wages for board and
lodging.[127] Those who ran away would be whipped and returned to
their masters, with some masters shackling them to prevent
escape.[127] Children employed as mule scavengers by cotton mills
would crawl under machinery to pick up cotton, working 14 hours a day,
six days a week. Some lost hands or limbs, others were crushed under
the machines, and some were decapitated.[127] Young girls worked at
match factories, where phosphorus fumes would cause many to develop
phossy jaw.[127] Children employed at glassworks were regularly burned
and blinded, and those working at potteries were vulnerable to
poisonous clay dust.[127]
Reports were written detailing some of the abuses, particularly in the
coal mines[128] and textile factories,[129] and these helped to
popularise the children's plight. The public outcry, especially among
the upper and middle classes, helped stir change in the young workers'
welfare.
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 and 1844, the first
general laws against child labour, the
Factory
Factory Acts, were passed in
Britain: 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
Factory inspectors
supervised the execution of the law, however, their scarcity made
enforcement difficult.[127] About ten years later, the employment of
children and women in mining was forbidden. Although laws such as
these decreased the number of child labourers, child labour remained
significantly present in Europe and the United States until the 20th
century.[130]
Organisation of labour
See also:
Trade union
Trade union § History
The
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution concentrated labour into mills, factories
and mines, thus facilitating the organisation of combinations or 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 suffering
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.
Many strikes were painful events for both sides, the unions and the
management. In Britain, the
Combination Act 1799 forbade workers to
form any kind of trade union until its repeal in 1824. Even after
this, unions were still severely restricted.
In 1832, the Reform Act extended the vote in Britain but did not grant
universal suffrage. That year six men from
Tolpuddle
Tolpuddle in Dorset founded
the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers to protest against the
gradual lowering of wages in the 1830s. They refused to work for less
than ten shillings a week, although by this time wages had been
reduced to seven shillings a week and were due to be further reduced
to six. In 1834 James Frampton, a local landowner, wrote to the Prime
Minister, Lord Melbourne, to complain about the union, invoking an
obscure law from 1797 prohibiting people from swearing oaths to each
other, which the members of the Friendly Society had done. James
Brine, James Hammett, George Loveless, George's brother James
Loveless, George's brother in-law Thomas Standfield, and Thomas's son
John Standfield were arrested, found guilty, and transported to
Australia. They became known as the
Tolpuddle
Tolpuddle Martyrs. In the 1830s
and 1840s, the Chartist movement was the first large-scale organised
working class political movement which campaigned for political
equality and social justice. Its Charter of reforms received over
three million signatures but was rejected by Parliament without
consideration.
Working people also formed friendly societies and co-operative
societies as mutual support groups against times of economic hardship.
Enlightened industrialists, such as
Robert Owen
Robert Owen also supported these
organisations to improve the conditions of the working class.
Unions slowly overcame the legal restrictions on the right to strike.
In 1842, a general strike involving cotton workers and colliers was
organised through the Chartist movement which stopped production
across Great Britain.[131]
Eventually, effective political organisation for working people was
achieved through the trades unions who, after the extensions of the
franchise in 1867 and 1885, began to support socialist political
parties that later merged to become the British Labour Party.
Luddites
Main article: Luddite
Luddites smashing a power loom in 1812
The rapid industrialisation of the English economy cost many craft
workers their jobs. The movement started first with lace and hosiery
workers near
Nottingham
Nottingham and spread to other areas of the textile
industry owing to early industrialisation. Many weavers also 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
Luddite movement began in 1811. The Luddites rapidly gained
popularity, and the British government took drastic measures, using
the militia or army to protect industry. Those rioters who were caught
were tried and hanged, or transported for life.
Unrest continued in other sectors as they industrialised, such as with
agricultural labourers in the 1830s when large parts of southern
Britain were affected by the
Captain Swing
Captain Swing disturbances. Threshing
machines were a particular target, and hayrick burning was a popular
activity. However, the riots led to the first formation of trade
unions, and further pressure for reform.
Destruction of hand textile production in India, China, etc.
The traditional centers of hand textile production such as India,
parts of the Middle East and later China could not withstand the
competition from machine-made textiles, which over a period of decades
destroyed the hand made textile industries and left millions of people
without work, many of whom starved.[30]
Effect on cotton production and expansion of slavery
Cheap cotton textiles increased the demand for raw cotton; previously,
it had primarily been consumed in subtropical regions where it was
grown, with little raw cotton available for export. Consequently,
prices of raw cotton rose. Some cotton had been grown in the West
Indies, particularly in Hispaniola, but Haitian cotton production was
halted by the
Haitian Revolution
Haitian Revolution in 1791. The invention of the cotton
gin in 1793 allowed Georgia green seeded cotton to be profitable,
leading to the widespread growth of cotton plantations in the United
States and Brazil. The Americas, particularly the U.S., had labor
shortages and high priced labor, which made slavery attractive.
America's cotton plantations were highly efficient and profitable, and
able to keep up with demand.[132] The U.S. Civil war created a "cotton
famine" that lead to increased production in other areas of the world,
including new colonies in Africa.
Impact on environment
Levels of air pollution rose during the Industrial Revolution,
sparking the first modern environmental laws to be passed in the
mid-19th century.
The origins of the environmental movement lay in the response to
increasing levels of smoke pollution in the atmosphere during the
Industrial Revolution. The emergence of great factories and the
concomitant immense growth in coal consumption gave rise to an
unprecedented level of air pollution in industrial centers; after 1900
the large volume of industrial chemical discharges added to the
growing load of untreated human waste.[133] The first large-scale,
modern environmental laws came in the form of Britain's
Alkali Acts,
passed in 1863, to regulate the deleterious air pollution (gaseous
hydrochloric acid) given off by the Leblanc process, used to produce
soda ash. An
Alkali inspector and four sub-inspectors were appointed
to curb this pollution. The responsibilities of the inspectorate were
gradually expanded, culminating in the
Alkali Order 1958 which placed
all major heavy industries that emitted smoke, grit, dust and fumes
under supervision.
The manufactured gas industry began in British cities in 1812–1820.
The technique used produced highly toxic effluent that was dumped into
sewers and rivers. The gas companies were repeatedly sued in nuisance
lawsuits. They usually lost and modified the worst practices. The City
of London repeatedly indicted gas companies in the 1820s for polluting
the Thames and poisoning its fish. Finally, Parliament wrote company
charters to regulate toxicity.[134] The industry reached the US around
1850 causing pollution and lawsuits.[135]
In industrial cities local experts and reformers, especially after
1890, took the lead in identifying environmental degradation and
pollution, and initiating grass-roots movements to demand and achieve
reforms.[136] Typically the highest priority went to water and air
pollution. The
Coal
Coal
Smoke
Smoke Abatement Society was formed in Britain in
1898 making it one of the oldest environmental NGOs. It was founded by
artist Sir
William Blake
William Blake Richmond, frustrated with the pall cast by
coal smoke. Although there were earlier pieces of legislation, the
Public Health Act 1875
Public Health Act 1875 required all furnaces and fireplaces to consume
their own smoke. It also provided for sanctions against factories that
emitted large amounts of black smoke. The provisions of this law were
extended in 1926 with the
Smoke
Smoke Abatement Act to include other
emissions, such as soot, ash, and gritty particles and to empower
local authorities to impose their own regulations.[137]
Industrialisation beyond the United Kingdom
Continental Europe
The
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution on
Continental Europe
.svg/440px-Mainland_Europe_(orthographic_projection).svg.png)
Continental Europe came a little later
than in Great Britain. In many industries, this involved the
application of technology developed in Britain in new places. Often
the technology was purchased from Britain or British engineers and
entrepreneurs moved abroad in search of new opportunities. By 1809,
part of the
Ruhr
Ruhr Valley in Westphalia was called 'Miniature England'
because of its similarities to the industrial areas of England. The
German, Russian and Belgian governments all provided state funding to
the new industries. In some cases (such as iron), the different
availability of resources locally meant that only some aspects of the
British technology were adopted.
Belgium
Belgium was the second country, after Britain, in which the Industrial
Revolution took place and the first in continental Europe: Wallonia
(French speaking southern Belgium) was the first region to follow the
British model successfully. Starting in the middle of the 1820s, and
especially after Belgium became an independent nation in 1830,
numerous works comprising coke blast furnaces as well as puddling and
rolling mills were built in the coal mining areas around
Liège
Liège and
Charleroi. The leader was a transplanted Englishman John Cockerill.
His factories at
Seraing
Seraing integrated all stages of production, from
engineering to the supply of raw materials, as early as 1825.[138]
Wallonia
Wallonia exemplified the radical evolution of industrial expansion.
Thanks to coal (the French word "houille" was coined in
Wallonia),[139] the region geared up to become the 2nd industrial
power in the world after Britain. But it is also pointed out by many
researchers, with its Sillon industriel, 'Especially in the Haine,
Sambre
Sambre and Meuse valleys, between the
Borinage
Borinage and Liège, (...) there
was a huge industrial development based on coal-mining and
iron-making...'.[140] Philippe Raxhon wrote about the period after
1830: "It was not propaganda but a reality the Walloon regions were
becoming the second industrial power all over the world after
Britain."[141] "The sole industrial centre outside the collieries and
blast furnaces of Walloon was the old cloth making town of
Ghent."[142] Michel De Coster, Professor at the Université de Liège
wrote also: "The historians and the economists say that Belgium was
the second industrial power of the world, in proportion to its
population and its territory (...) But this rank is the one of
Wallonia
Wallonia where the coal-mines, the blast furnaces, the iron and zinc
factories, the wool industry, the glass industry, the weapons
industry... were concentrated." [143]
Demographic effects
Wallonia
Wallonia was also the birthplace of a strong Socialist party and
strong trade-unions in a particular sociological landscape. At the
left, the Sillon industriel, which runs from
Mons
Mons in the west, to
Verviers
Verviers in the east (except part of North Flanders, in another period
of the industrial revolution, after 1920). Even if Belgium is the
second industrial country after Britain, the effect of the industrial
revolution there was very different. In 'Breaking stereotypes', Muriel
Neven and Isabelle Devious say:
The industrial revolution changed a mainly rural society into an urban
one, but with a strong contrast between northern and southern Belgium.
During the
Middle Ages
Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, Flanders was
characterised by the presence of large urban centres (...) at the
beginning of the nineteenth century this region (Flanders), with an
urbanisation degree of more than 30 per cent, remained one of the most
urbanised in the world. By comparison, this proportion reached only 17
per cent in Wallonia, barely 10 per cent in most West European
countries, 16 per cent in France and 25 per cent in Britain.
Nineteenth century industrialisation did not affect the traditional
urban infrastructure, except in
Ghent
Ghent (...) Also, in
Wallonia
Wallonia the
traditional urban network was largely unaffected by the
industrialisation process, even though the proportion of city-dwellers
rose from 17 to 45 per cent between 1831 and 1910. Especially in the
Haine,
Sambre
Sambre and Meuse valleys, between the
Borinage
Borinage and Liège,
where there was a huge industrial development based on coal-mining and
iron-making, urbanisation was fast. During these eighty years the
number of municipalities with more than 5,000 inhabitants increased
from only 21 to more than one hundred, concentrating nearly half of
the Walloon population in this region. Nevertheless, industrialisation
remained quite traditional in the sense that it did not lead to the
growth of modern and large urban centres, but to a conurbation of
industrial villages and towns developed around a coal-mine or a
factory. Communication routes between these small centres only became
populated later and created a much less dense urban morphology than,
for instance, the area around
Liège
Liège where the old town was there to
direct migratory flows.[144]
France
Main article: Economic history of France
The industrial revolution in France followed a particular course as it
did not correspond to the main model followed by other countries.
Notably, most French historians argue France did not go through a
clear take-off.[145] Instead, France's economic growth and
industrialisation process was slow and steady through the 18th and
19th centuries. However, some stages were identified by Maurice
Lévy-Leboyer:
French Revolution
French Revolution and Napoleonic wars (1789–1815),
industrialisation, along with Britain (1815–1860),
economic slowdown (1860–1905),
renewal of the growth after 1905.
Germany
Main article: Economic history of Germany
Based on its leadership in chemical research in the universities and
industrial laboratories, Germany, which was unified in 1871, became
dominant in the world's chemical industry in the late 19th century. At
first the production of dyes based on aniline was critical.[146]
Germany's political disunity – with three dozen states – and a
pervasive conservatism made it difficult to build railways in the
1830s. However, by the 1840s, trunk lines linked the major cities;
each German state was responsible for the lines within its own
borders. Lacking a technological base at first, the Germans imported
their engineering and hardware from Britain, but quickly learned the
skills needed to operate and expand the railways. In many cities, the
new railway shops were the centres of technological awareness and
training, so that by 1850, Germany was self-sufficient in meeting the
demands of railroad construction, and the railways were a major
impetus for the growth of the new steel industry. Observers found that
even as late as 1890, their engineering was inferior to Britain's.
However, German unification in 1870 stimulated consolidation,
nationalisation into state-owned companies, and further rapid growth.
Unlike the situation in France, the goal was support of
industrialisation, and so heavy lines crisscrossed the
Ruhr
Ruhr and other
industrial districts, and provided good connections to the major ports
of Hamburg and Bremen. By 1880, Germany had 9,400 locomotives pulling
43,000 passengers and 30,000 tons of freight, and pulled ahead of
France[147]
Sweden
Main article: Economic history of Sweden
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During the period 1790–1815 Sweden experienced two parallel economic
movements: an agricultural revolution with larger agricultural
estates, new crops and farming tools and a commercialisation of
farming, and a protoindustrialisation, with small industries being
established in the countryside and with workers switching between
agricultural work in summer and industrial production in winter. This
led to economic growth benefiting large sections of the population and
leading up to a consumption revolution starting in the 1820s.
During 1815–1850 the protoindustries developed into more specialised
and larger industries. This period witnessed increasing regional
specialisation with mining in Bergslagen, textile mills in
Sjuhäradsbygden and forestry in Norrland. Several important
institutional changes took place in this period, such as free and
mandatory schooling introduced 1842 (as first country in the world),
the abolition of the national monopoly on trade in handicrafts in
1846, and a stock company law in 1848.
During 1850–1890, Sweden experienced a veritable explosion in
export, dominated by crops, wood and steel. Sweden abolished most
tariffs and other barriers to free trade in the 1850s and joined the
gold standard in 1873.
During 1890–1930, Sweden experienced the second industrial
revolution. New industries developed with their focus on the domestic
market: mechanical engineering, power utilities, papermaking and
textile.
Japan
Main articles:
Meiji Restoration
Meiji Restoration and Economic history of Japan
The industrial revolution began about 1870 as
Meiji period
Meiji period leaders
decided to catch up with the West. The government built railroads,
improved roads, and inaugurated a land reform programme to prepare the
country for further development. It inaugurated a new Western-based
education system for all young people, sent thousands of students to
the United States and Europe, and hired more than 3,000 Westerners to
teach modern science, mathematics, technology, and foreign languages
in Japan (Foreign government advisors in Meiji Japan).
In 1871, a group of Japanese politicians known as the Iwakura Mission
toured Europe and the United States to learn western ways. The result
was a deliberate state-led industrialisation policy to enable Japan to
quickly catch up. The Bank of Japan, founded in 1882,[148] used taxes
to fund model steel and textile factories. Education was expanded and
Japanese students were sent to study in the west.
Modern industry first appeared in textiles, including cotton and
especially silk, which was based in home workshops in rural
areas.[149]
United States
Main articles: American system of manufacturing, Interchangeable
parts, Economic history of the United States, Technological and
industrial history of the United States, and
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution in
the United States
See also: History of Lowell, Massachusetts
Slater's Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
During the late 18th an early 19th centuries when the UK and parts of
Western Europe began to industrialise, the US was primarily an
agricultural and natural resource producing and processing
economy.[150] The building of roads and canals, the introduction of
steamboats and the building of railroads were important for handling
agricultural and natural resource products in the large and sparsely
populated country of the period.[151][152]
Important American technological contributions during the period of
the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution were the cotton gin and the development of a
system for making interchangeable parts, the latter aided by the
development of the milling machine in the US. The development of
machine tools and the system of interchangeable parts were the basis
for the rise of the US as the world's leading industrial nation in the
late 19th century.
Oliver Evans
Oliver Evans invented an automated flour mill in the mid-1780s that
used control mechanisms and conveyors so that no labour was needed
from the time grain was loaded into the elevator buckets until flour
was discharged into a wagon. This is considered to be the first modern
materials handling system an important advance in the progress toward
mass production.[29]
The United States originally used horse-powered machinery for small
scale applications such as grain milling, but eventually switched to
water power after textile factories began being built in the 1790s. As
a result, industrialisation was concentrated in
New England
New England and the
Northeastern United States, which has fast-moving rivers. The newer
water-powered production lines proved more economical than horse-drawn
production. In the late 19th century steam-powered manufacturing
overtook water-powered manufacturing, allowing the industry to spread
to the Midwest.
Thomas Somers and the
Cabot Brothers
Cabot Brothers founded the Beverly Cotton
Manufactory in 1787, the first cotton mill in America, the largest
cotton mill of its era,[153] and a significant milestone in the
research and development of cotton mills in the future. This mill was
designed to use horse power, but the operators quickly learned that
the horse-drawn platform was economically unstable, and had economic
losses for years. Despite the losses, the Manufactory served as a
playground of innovation, both in turning a large amount of cotton,
but also developing the water-powered milling structure used in
Slater's Mill.[154]
In 1793,
Samuel Slater
Samuel Slater (1768–1835) founded the
Slater Mill
Slater Mill at
Pawtucket, Rhode Island. He had learned of the new textile
technologies as a boy apprentice in Derbyshire, England, and defied
laws against the emigration of skilled workers by leaving for New York
in 1789, hoping to make money with his knowledge. After founding
Slater's Mill, he went on to own 13 textile mills.[155] Daniel Day
established a wool carding mill in the
Blackstone Valley
Blackstone Valley at Uxbridge,
Massachusetts in 1809, the third woollen mill established in the US
(The first was in Hartford, Connecticut, and the second at Watertown,
Massachusetts.) The John H. Chafee
Blackstone River
Blackstone River Valley National
Heritage Corridor retraces the history of "America's Hardest-Working
River', the Blackstone. The
Blackstone River
Blackstone River and its tributaries,
which cover more than 45 miles (72 km) from Worcester,
Massachusetts to Providence, Rhode Island, was the birthplace of
America's Industrial Revolution. At its peak over 1100 mills operated
in this valley, including Slater's mill, and with it the earliest
beginnings of America's Industrial and Technological Development.
Merchant Francis Cabot Lowell from Newburyport, Massachusetts
memorised the design of textile machines on his tour of British
factories in 1810. Realising that the
War of 1812
War of 1812 had ruined his
import business but that a demand for domestic finished cloth was
emerging in America, on his return to the United States, he set up the
Boston
Manufacturing
Manufacturing Company. Lowell and his partners built America's
second cotton-to-cloth textile mill at Waltham, Massachusetts, second
to the Beverly
Cotton
Cotton Manufactory. After his death in 1817, his
associates built America's first planned factory town, which they
named after him. This enterprise was capitalised in a public stock
offering, one of the first uses of it in the United States. Lowell,
Massachusetts, using 5.6 miles (9.0 km) of canals and 10,000
horsepower delivered by the Merrimack River, is considered by some as
a major contributor to the success of the American Industrial
Revolution. The short-lived utopia-like
Waltham-Lowell system
Waltham-Lowell system was
formed, as a direct response to the poor working conditions in
Britain. However, by 1850, especially following the Irish Potato
Famine, the system had been replaced by poor immigrant labour.
A major U.S. contribution to industrialization was the development of
techniques to make interchangeable parts from metal. Precision metal
machining techniques were developed by the U.S. Department of War to
make interchangeable parts for small firearms. The development work
took place at the Federal Arsenals at Springfield Armory and Harpers
Ferry Armory. Techniques for precision machining using machine tools
included using fixtures to hold the parts in proper position, jigs to
guide the cutting tools and precision blocks and gauges to measure the
accuracy. The milling machine, a fundamental machine tool, is believed
to have been invented by Eli Whitney, who was a government contractor
who built firearms as part of this program. Another important
invention was the Blanchard lathe, invented by Thomas Blanchard. The
Blanchard lathe, or pattern tracing lathe, was actually a shaper that
could produce copies of wooden gun stocks. The use of machinery and
the techniques for producing standardized and interchangeable parts
became known as the American system of manufacturing.[29]
Precision manufacturing techniques made it possible to build machines
that mechanized the shoe industry.[156] and the watch industry. The
industrialisation of the watch industry started 1854 also in Waltham,
Massachusetts, at the Waltham Watch Company, with the development of
machine tools, gauges and assembling methods adapted to the micro
precision required for watches.
Second Industrial Revolution
Main article: Second Industrial Revolution
Sächsische Maschinenfabrik
.jpg)
Sächsische Maschinenfabrik in Chemnitz, Germany, 1868
Steel
Steel is often cited as the first of several new areas for industrial
mass-production, which are said to characterise a "Second Industrial
Revolution", beginning around 1850, although a method for mass
manufacture of steel was not invented until the 1860s, when Sir Henry
Bessemer invented a new furnace which could convert molten pig iron
into steel in large quantities. However, it only became widely
available in the 1870s after the process was modified to produce more
uniform quality.[33][157] Bessemer steel was being displaced by the
open hearth furnace near the end of the 19th century.
This
Second Industrial Revolution
Second Industrial Revolution gradually grew to include chemicals,
mainly the chemical industries, petroleum (refining and distribution),
and, in the 20th century, the automotive industry, and was marked by a
transition of technological leadership from Britain to the United
States and Germany.
The increasing availability of economical petroleum products also
reduced the importance of coal and further widened the potential for
industrialisation.
A new revolution began with electricity and electrification in the
electrical industries. The introduction of hydroelectric power
generation in the
Alps
Alps enabled the rapid industrialisation of
coal-deprived northern Italy, beginning in the 1890s.
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,
Standard Oil
Standard Oil and
Bayer
.jpg)
Bayer AG
joined the railroad and ship companies on the world's stock markets.
Causes
Regional
GDP per capita
GDP per capita changed very little for most of human history
before the Industrial Revolution.
The causes of the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution were complicated and remain a
topic for debate, with some historians believing the Revolution was an
outgrowth of social and institutional changes brought by the end of
feudalism in Britain after the
English Civil War
English Civil War in the 17th century.
The
Enclosure
Enclosure movement and the
British Agricultural Revolution
British Agricultural Revolution made
food production more efficient and less labour-intensive, forcing the
farmers who could no longer be self-sufficient in agriculture into
cottage industry, for example weaving, and in the longer term into the
cities and the newly developed factories.[158] The colonial expansion
of the 17th century with the accompanying development of international
trade, creation of financial markets and accumulation of capital are
also cited as factors, as is the scientific revolution of the 17th
century.[159] A change in marrying patterns to getting married later
made people able to accumulate more human capital during their youth,
thereby encouraging economic development.[160]
Until the 1980s, it was universally believed by academic historians
that technological innovation was the heart of the Industrial
Revolution and the key enabling technology was the invention and
improvement of the steam engine.[161] However, recent research into
the Marketing Era has challenged the traditional, supply-oriented
interpretation of the Industrial Revolution.[162]
Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford has proposed that the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution had its
origins in the Early Middle Ages, much earlier than most
estimates.[163] He explains that the model for standardised mass
production was the printing press and that "the archetypal model for
the industrial era was the clock". He also cites the monastic emphasis
on order and time-keeping, as well as the fact that medieval cities
had at their centre a church with bell ringing at regular intervals as
being necessary precursors to a greater synchronisation necessary for
later, more physical, manifestations such as the steam engine.
The presence of a large domestic market should also be considered an
important driver of the Industrial Revolution, particularly explaining
why it occurred in Britain. In other nations, such as France, markets
were split up by local regions, which often imposed tolls and tariffs
on goods traded among them.[164] Internal tariffs were abolished by
Henry VIII of England, they survived in Russia till 1753, 1789 in
France and 1839 in Spain.
Governments' grant of limited monopolies to inventors under a
developing patent system (the
Statute of Monopolies
.svg/280px-Coat_of_Arms_of_England_(1603-1649).svg.png)
Statute of Monopolies in 1623) is
considered an influential factor. The effects of patents, both good
and ill, on the development of industrialisation are clearly
illustrated in the history of the steam engine, the key enabling
technology. In return for publicly revealing the workings of an
invention the patent system rewarded inventors such as
James Watt
James Watt by
allowing them to monopolise the production of the first steam engines,
thereby rewarding inventors and increasing the pace of technological
development. However, monopolies bring with them their own
inefficiencies which may counterbalance, or even overbalance, the
beneficial effects of publicising ingenuity and rewarding
inventors.[165] Watt's monopoly prevented other inventors, such as
Richard Trevithick, William Murdoch, or Jonathan Hornblower, whom
Boulton and Watt
Boulton and Watt sued, from introducing improved steam engines,
thereby retarding the spread of steam power.[166][167]
Causes in Europe
Main article: Great Divergence
Interior of the London
Coal
Coal Exchange, c. 1808.
European 17th century colonial expansion, international trade, and
creation of financial markets produced a new legal and financial
environment, one which supported and enabled 18th century industrial
growth.
One question of active interest to historians is why the Industrial
Revolution occurred in Europe and not in other parts of the world in
the 18th century, particularly China, India, and the Middle East, or
at other times like in Classical Antiquity[168] or the Middle
Ages.[169] Numerous factors have been suggested, including education,
technological changes[170] (see Scientific Revolution in Europe),
"modern" government, "modern" work attitudes, ecology, and
culture.[171]
China was the world's most technological advanced country for many
centuries; however, China stagnated economically and technologically
and was surpassed by Western Europe before the Age of Exploration, by
which time China banned imports and denied entry to foreigners. China
was also a totalitarian society.[172][173] Modern estimates of per
capita income on Western Europe in the late 18th century are of
roughly 1,500 dollars in purchasing power parity (and Britain had a
per capita income of nearly 2,000 dollars[174]) whereas China, by
comparison, had only 450 dollars. India was essentially feudal,
politically fragmented and not as economically advanced as Western
Europe.[175]
Historians such as
David Landes and
Max Weber
Max Weber credit the different
belief systems in Asia and Europe with dictating where the revolution
occurred.[176] The religion and beliefs of Europe were largely
products of Judaeo-Christianity and Greek thought. Conversely, Chinese
society was founded on men like Confucius, Mencius, Han Feizi
(Legalism), Lao Tzu (Taoism), and Buddha (Buddhism), resulting in very
different worldviews.[177] Other factors include the considerable
distance of China's coal deposits, though large, from its cities as
well as the then unnavigable
Yellow River
Yellow River that connects these deposits
to the sea.[178]
Regarding India, the Marxist historian
Rajani Palme Dutt
Rajani Palme Dutt said: "The
capital to finance the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution in India instead went
into financing the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution in Britain."[179] In contrast
to China, India was split up into many competing kingdoms after the
decline of the Mughal Empire, with the major ones in its aftermath
including the Marathas, Sikhs, Bengal Subah, and Kingdom of Mysore. In
addition, the economy was highly dependent on two sectors –
agriculture of subsistence and cotton, and there appears to have been
little technical innovation. It is believed that the vast amounts of
wealth were largely stored away in palace treasuries by totalitarian
monarchs prior to the British take over.[citation needed]
Economic historian
Joel Mokyr
Joel Mokyr has argued that political fragmentation
(the presence of a large number of European states) made it possible
for heterodox ideas to thrive, as entrepreneurs, innovators,
ideologues and heretics could easily flee to a neighboring state in
the event that the one state would try to suppress their ideas and
activities. This is what set Europe apart from the technologically
advanced, large unitary empires such as China and India. China had
both a printing press and movable type, and India had similar levels
scientific and technological achievement as Europe in 1700, yet the
industrial revolution would occur in Europe, not China or India. In
Europe, political fragmentation was coupled with an "integrated market
for ideas" where Europe's intellectuals used the lingua franca of
Latin, had a shared intellectual basis in Europe's classical heritage
and the pan-European institution of the Republic of Letters.[180]
Causes in Britain
As the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution developed British manufactured output
surged ahead of other economies.
Great Britain
Great Britain provided the legal and cultural foundations that enabled
entrepreneurs to pioneer the industrial revolution.[181] Key factors
fostering this environment were: (1) The period of peace and stability
which followed the unification of England and Scotland; (2) no trade
barriers between England and Scotland; (3) the rule of law (enforcing
property rights and respecting the sanctity of contracts); (4) a
straightforward legal system that allowed the formation of joint-stock
companies (corporations); (5) absence of tolls, which had largely
disappeared from Britain by the 15th century, but were an extreme
burden on goods elsewhere in the world, and (6) a free market
(capitalism).[1]
"An unprecedented explosion of new ideas, and new technological
inventions, transformed our use of energy, creating an increasingly
industrial and urbanised country. Roads, railways and canals were
built. Great cities appeared. Scores of factories and mills sprang up.
Our landscape would never be the same again. It was a revolution that
transformed not only the country, but the world itself."
– British historian Jeremy Black on the BBC's Why the Industrial
Revolution Happened Here.[105]
Geographical and natural resource advantages of
Great Britain
Great Britain were the
fact that it had extensive coastlines and many navigable rivers in an
age where water was the easiest means of transportation and having the
highest quality coal in Europe.[1]:332
There were two main values that really drove the Industrial Revolution
in Britain. These values were self-interest and an entrepreneurial
spirit. Because of these interests, many industrial advances were made
that resulted in a huge increase in personal wealth and a consumer
revolution.[105] These advancements also greatly benefitted the
British society as a whole. Countries around the world started to
recognise the changes and advancements in Britain and use them as an
example to begin their own Industrial Revolutions.[182]
The debate about the start of the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution also concerns
the massive lead that
Great Britain
Great Britain had over other countries. Some
have stressed the importance of natural or financial resources that
Britain received from its many overseas colonies or that profits from
the British slave trade between Africa and the Caribbean helped fuel
industrial investment. However, it has been pointed out that slave
trade and West Indian plantations provided only 5% of the British
national income during the years of the Industrial Revolution.[183]
Even though slavery accounted for so little, Caribbean-based demand
accounted for 12% of Britain's industrial output.[184]
William Bell Scott
William Bell Scott
Iron
Iron and Coal, 1855–60
Instead, the greater liberalisation of trade from a large merchant
base may have allowed Britain to produce and use emerging scientific
and technological developments more effectively than countries with
stronger monarchies, particularly China and Russia. Britain emerged
from the
Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars as the only European nation not ravaged by
financial plunder and economic collapse, and having the only merchant
fleet of any useful size (European merchant fleets were destroyed
during the war by the Royal Navy[185]). Britain's extensive exporting
cottage industries also ensured markets were already available for
many early forms of manufactured goods. The conflict resulted in most
British warfare being conducted overseas, reducing the devastating
effects of territorial conquest that affected much of Europe. This was
further aided by Britain's geographical position – an island
separated from the rest of mainland Europe.
William and Mary Presenting the Cap of
Liberty
Liberty to Europe, 1716, Sir
James Thornhill. Enthroned in heaven with the Virtues behind them are
the royals William III and Mary II who had taken the throne after the
Glorious Revolution
Glorious Revolution and signed the
English Bill of Rights
.svg/280px-Coat_of_Arms_of_England_(1689-1694).svg.png)
English Bill of Rights of 1689.
William tramples on arbitrary power and hands the red cap of liberty
to Europe where, unlike Britain, absolute monarchy stayed the normal
form of power execution. Below William is the French king Louis
XIV.[186]
Another theory is that Britain was able to succeed in the Industrial
Revolution due to the availability of key resources it possessed. It
had a dense population for its small geographical size.
Enclosure
Enclosure of
common land and the related agricultural revolution made a supply of
this labour readily available. There was also a local coincidence of
natural resources in the North of England, the English Midlands, South
Wales and the Scottish Lowlands. Local supplies of coal, iron, lead,
copper, tin, limestone and water power, resulted in excellent
conditions for the development and expansion of industry. Also, the
damp, mild weather conditions of the North West of England provided
ideal conditions for the spinning of cotton, providing a natural
starting point for the birth of the textiles industry.
The stable political situation in Britain from around 1688 following
the Glorious Revolution, and British society's greater receptiveness
to change (compared with other European countries) can also be said to
be factors favouring the Industrial Revolution. Peasant resistance to
industrialisation was largely eliminated by the
Enclosure
Enclosure movement,
and the landed upper classes developed commercial interests that made
them pioneers in removing obstacles to the growth of capitalism.[187]
(This point is also made in Hilaire Belloc's The Servile State.)
The French philosopher
Voltaire
_-001.jpg/440px-Nicolas_de_Largillière,_François-Marie_Arouet_dit_Voltaire_(vers_1724-1725)_-001.jpg)
Voltaire wrote about capitalism and religious
tolerance in his book on English society, Letters on the English
(1733), noting why England at that time was more prosperous in
comparison to the country's less religiously tolerant European
neighbours. "Take a view of the Royal Exchange in London, a place more
venerable than many courts of justice, where the representatives of
all nations meet for the benefit of mankind. There the Jew, the
Mahometan [Muslim], and the Christian transact together, as though
they all professed the same religion, and give the name of infidel to
none but bankrupts. There the Presbyterian confides in the Anabaptist,
and the Churchman depends on the Quaker’s word. If one religion only
were allowed in England, the Government would very possibly become
arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut one another’s
throats; but as there are such a multitude, they all live happy and in
peace."[188]
Britain's population grew 280% 1550–1820, while the rest of Western
Europe grew 50–80%. Seventy percent of European urbanisation
happened in Britain 1750–1800. By 1800, only the Netherlands was
more urbanised than Britain. This was only possible because coal,
coke, imported cotton, brick and slate had replaced wood, charcoal,
flax, peat and thatch. The latter compete with land grown to feed
people while mined materials do not. Yet more land would be freed when
chemical fertilisers replaced manure and horse's work was mechanised.
A workhorse needs 3 to 5 acres (1.21 to 2.02 ha) for fodder while
even early steam engines produced four times more mechanical energy.
In 1700, 5/6 of coal mined worldwide was in Britain, while the
Netherlands had none; so despite having Europe's best transport, most
urbanised, well paid, literate people and lowest taxes, it failed to
industrialise. In the 18th century, it was the only European country
whose cities and population shrank. Without coal, Britain would have
run out of suitable river sites for mills by the 1830s.[189]
Economic historian Robert Allen has argued that high wages, cheap
capital and very cheap energy in Britain made it the ideal place for
the industrial revolution to occur.[190] These factors made it vastly
more profitable to invest in research and development, and to put
technology to use in Britain than other societies.[190]
Transfer of knowledge
A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery
A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery (ca. 1766). Informal
philosophical societies spread scientific advances
Knowledge of 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
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 eager 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
Lunar Society of
Birmingham, in which members met to discuss 'natural philosophy' (i.e.
science) and often its application to manufacturing. The Lunar Society
flourished from 1765 to 1809, and it has been said of them, "They
were, if you like, the revolutionary committee of that most far
reaching of all the eighteenth century revolutions, the Industrial
Revolution".[191] Other such societies published volumes of
proceedings and transactions. For example, 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. Encyclopaedias such as
Harris's
Lexicon Technicum
Lexicon Technicum (1704) and 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
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.
Protestant work ethic
Main article: Protestant work ethic
Another theory is that the British advance was due to the presence of
an entrepreneurial class which believed in progress, technology and
hard work.[192] The existence of this class is often linked to the
Protestant work ethic
Protestant work ethic (see Max Weber) and the particular status of the
Baptists
Baptists and the dissenting Protestant sects, such as the Quakers and
Presbyterians that had flourished with the English Civil War.
Reinforcement of confidence in the rule of law, which followed
establishment of the prototype of constitutional monarchy in Britain
in the
Glorious Revolution
Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the emergence of a stable
financial market there based on the management of the national debt by
the Bank of England, contributed to the capacity for, and interest in,
private financial investment in industrial ventures.
Dissenters found themselves barred or discouraged from almost all
public offices, as well as education at England's only two
universities at the time (although dissenters were still free to study
at Scotland's four universities). When the restoration of the monarchy
took place and membership in the official Anglican Church became
mandatory due to the Test Act, they thereupon became active in
banking, manufacturing and education. The Unitarians, in particular,
were very involved in education, by running Dissenting Academies,
where, in contrast to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and
schools such as Eton and Harrow, much attention was given to
mathematics and the sciences – areas of scholarship vital to the
development of manufacturing technologies.
Historians sometimes consider this social factor to be extremely
important, along with the nature of the national economies involved.
While members of these sects were excluded from certain circles of the
government, they were considered fellow Protestants, to a limited
extent, by many in the middle class, such as traditional financiers or
other businessmen. Given this relative tolerance and the supply of
capital, the natural outlet for the more enterprising members of these
sects would be to seek new opportunities in the technologies created
in the wake of the scientific revolution of the 17th century.
Opposition from Romanticism
Main article: Romanticism
During the
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution an intellectual and artistic
hostility towards the new industrialisation developed, associated with
the Romantic movement.
Romanticism
Romanticism revered the traditionalism of rural
life and recoiled against the upheavals caused by industrialization,
urbanization and the wretchedness of the working classes.[193] Its
major exponents in English included the artist and poet William Blake
and poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats,
Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The movement stressed the
importance of "nature" in art and language, in contrast to "monstrous"
machines and factories; the "Dark satanic mills" of Blake's poem "And
did those feet in ancient time". Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein
reflected concerns that scientific progress might be two-edged. French
Romanticism
Romanticism likewise was highly critical of industry.[194]
See also
General
Automation
Capitalism
Capitalism in the nineteenth century
Capitalist mode of production
Carboniferous period
Coal
Deindustrialization
Digital Revolution
Division of labour
Dual revolution
Economic history of the United Kingdom
Hydraulics
Human timeline
Industrial Age
Industrial society
Information revolution
Laissez-faire
Law of the handicap of a head start – Dialectics of progress
Machine
Machine Age
Steam
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Other
Chinese industrialization
Petroleum
Petroleum Revolution
Science and invention in Birmingham
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^ Merson 1990, pp. 34–35
^ How Earth Made Us: Fire by Professor Iain Stewart
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Royal Navy
Royal Navy itself may have contributed to Britain's industrial
growth. Among the first complex industrial manufacturing processes to
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warships. For instance, the average warship of the period used roughly
1000 pulley fittings. With a fleet as large as the Royal Navy, and
with these fittings needing to be replaced every 4 to 5 years, this
created a great demand which encouraged industrial expansion. The
industrial manufacture of rope can also be seen as a similar factor.
^ Old Naval College Archived 26 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine.
^ Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy:
Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World, pp. 29–30,
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^ Voltaire, François Marie Arouet de. (1909–14) [1734]. "Letter VI
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^ E A Wrigley, Continuity chance and change.
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Birmingham
Birmingham Jewellery
Quarter guide, Bob Miles.
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the First Industrial Nation. Northwich: Arley Hall Press.
ISBN 0-9518382-4-5. Argues that capital accumulation and
wealth concentration in an entrepreneurial culture following the
commercial revolution made the industrial revolution possible, for
example.
^ Michael Löwy and Robert Sayre, eds.,
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industrial revolution on literature (1955)
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