The industrial revolution
The industrial revolution began around the year 1700 to
1840. This was the transition from hand production of goods in homes to
factories with mass production with machines, chemicals, iron, water power,
steam power and the development of machines tools. This was the period during
which many small and rural communities in Europe and America became industrial
and urban. Many major changes during this revolution were involved in
transportation, manufacturing and communications; transforming our society to
what it is today.
The beginning of the industrial revolution
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The Industrial Revolution began
with the textile industry. Before the Industrial Revolution, people were born
and raised in small, rural communities where they learned to work hard to
produce their own food, clothing, furniture and tools. Making cloth required
skill and time; and as the population in England grew, people were willing to
pay for textile goods. That was when the industrial Revolution came around the
corner. People began to buy clothing instead of making them by hand. And this was
where the textile industry began. Because of the demands for laborers, People
began to move from their small, rural communities to the cities where they worked
in factories using machines and earned money. These machines were invented by
people who helped drive the Industrial Revolution. People like James Kay in 1733
invented the Flying Shuttle, which was just a simple weaving machine. Then in
1764, when James Hargreaves invented the Spinning Jenny, that spun more than
one ball of yarn or thread at a time, and then later on in 1774, when the
Spinning Mule was invented by Samuel Crompton which combined the spinning and
the weaving to one machine. Lastly Edmund Cartwright invents the water powered
loom. These all had a huge impact on the textile industry; it helped make it
possible for efficiency in producing textile goods. These people and others who
invented machines and had ideas and put them in action have helped the
Industrial Revolution to continue moving forward to where it is now. The first
textile factory in Great Britain was for making silk, but because of its
unaffordable price for most of the people, Cotton became to alternative choice.
It was cheaper, stronger, easily coloured and washed than many other materials.
Making clothing out of cotton had many advantages, but because of the cold
climate in Britain, they can’t grow cotton plants and they have to trade with
cotton producers from other places of the world. These places which include India
and Southern United Sates and the cotton that they sell to England were almost
all processed by slave labor. Therefore the cotton was low-cost and adding with
the new inventions that helped in this industry, producing textile goods has
become inexpensive and efficient.
Great Britain in the lead
Great Britain had many advantages that help it result as the
birthplace for the industrial revolution. Great Britain had plentiful iron and
coal resources, which were essential for industrialization. Britain was the
world’s leading colonial power; it had colonies that supplied raw materials as
well as a marketplace for finished goods. Also, the British government improved
transportation and used its navy to protect British trade. The demand for
British goods increased and merchants needed more cost effective methods of
production that could increase production, efficiency and profits, this which
led to the rise of mechanization and the factory system.