Technology of the Industrial Revolution The steam engine which at first increased the power available beyond that of animals soon also powered many labor-saving devices such as the sewing machine and the mechani cal reaper Initially this led to large-scale unemployment Yet the pace of innovation and technology kept quickening In North America the early building of ship canals was supplanted by railroads and the erection of many bridges Everywhere sailing ships were replaced by larger faster and more reliable steamships The telegraph allowed for rapid communication Postal services were initiated There was growing pride in such 19th-century achievements as the Eiffel Tower in Paris the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City the smoking steelworks of Pittsburgh and the transcontinental railroad With the invention of electric generators and motors and Thomas Edison’s light bulb electric power entered home and factory Steel replaced iron for buildings and allowed the erection of skyscrapers The invention of the internal-combustion engine led to the arrival of the automobile This in turn fostered the search for petro leum Chemical research provided the impetus for new industries The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1886 Farm machinery eased the hard life on the farm and 10
INTRODUCTION reduced the number of people needed to feed the rest of the population Weapons also changed First the rifled gun barrel was introduced then the explosive shell that made old fortifications obsolete and finally the machine gun This changed large scale warfare from individual battles to a broad front with millions of soldiers opposing each other by World War I Formal education in technology prospered with the establishment of engineering colleges throughout the world By the end of the 19th century the world had changed In the devel oped nations agricultural societies had been replaced by industrial societies This volume examines technological devel opments during the era of the Industrial Revolution This period advanced society in ways not seen until the advent of the digital revolution A brief history of the Industrial Revolution first provides contextual back ground technological achievements within individual classifications such as power tex tiles transport and communications and other industries follow and the volume con cludes with changes to labor and the workplace that were brought about by the Industrial Revolution 11
r1 e t p a h C THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Most products people in the industrial ized nations use today are turned out swiftly by the process of mass production by people and sometimes by robots work ing on assembly lines using power-driven machines People of ancient and medieval times had no such products They had to spend long tedious hours of hand labor even on simple objects The energy or power they employed in work came almost wholly from their own and animals muscles The Industrial Revolution is the name given the movement in which machines changed peo ple’s way of life as well as their methods of manufacture About the time of the American Revolution 1775 1783 the people of England began to use machines to make cloth and steam engines to run the machines A little later they invented 12
13 THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Prior to the Industrial Revolution every village had its tradesmen Masons carpenters shopkeepers and tailors worked independently locomotives Productivity began a spectacular climb By 1850 most Englishmen were labor ing in industrial towns and Great Britain had become the workshop of the world From Britain the Industrial Revolution spread grad ually throughout Europe and to the United States CHANGES THAT LED TO THE REVOLUTION The most important of the changes that brought about the Industrial Revolution were 1 the invention of machines to do the work of hand tools 2 the use of steam and later of
