The Industrial Revolution
Dramatic changes in the social and economic structure took place as inventions and technological innovations created the factory system of large-scale machine production and greater economic specialization, and as the laboring population, formerly employed predominantly in agriculture (in which production had also increased as a result of technological improvements), increasingly gathered in great urban factory centers.
Source: http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Industrial_Revolution.aspx#4
Heavy industry: coal
The landed gentry made huge fortunes from coal discovered under their land. Coal-fired steam engines powered the booming economy, whether in factories or on the rail network.
Conditions in coal mines were dire. Women and children were employed to pull the wagons of coal from the coal face to the shaft foot, because they were smaller, and cheaper, than a properly trained horse. Underground workings get very hot, so they often worked more or less naked. Sir Humphrey Davy’s safety lamp, invented in 1815, enabled deeper levels to be exploited, but it was adopted very slowly. Various methods of ventilating mines were invented, but none was widely adopted until 1849 when compressed air first became possible.
Between 1850 and 1880 the number of miners rose from an estimated 200,000 to 500,000, and their output rose from 30 million tons in 1836 to 44 million in 1880.
Source: http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/victorians/technology/industry.html
Ship building
Ship-building still continued in London. Brunel’s innovative Great Eastern, made of iron, driven by propeller and powered by steam, was launched in Blackwall in 1858. But by the end of the century ship-building and other heavy engineering had mostly moved to the north-east of England, the south of Wales and the Clyde in Scotland, where supplies of coal and iron were nearer.
The textile industry
The textile industry was at the centre of Britain industrial expansion in the Victorian period. Technological advances meant that cottons, wools, silks and dyestuffs could be produced at unprecedented rates, and the results were exported around the Empire.
Source: http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/victorians/technology/industry.html
Reflective Questions:
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Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in Britain?
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What was main effects of the Industrial Revolution on the British economy and society?
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What was effects of the industrial developments on the British Empire?
Its Effects
Technological change soon spilled over from manufacturing into other areas. Increased production heightened demands on the transportation system to move raw materials and finished products. Massive road and canal building programs were one response, but steam engines also were directly applied as a result of inventions in Britain and the United States. Steam shipping plied major waterways soon after 1800 and by the 1840s spread to oceanic transport. Railroad systems, first developed to haul coal from mines, were developed for intercity transport during the 1820s; the first commercial line opened between Liverpool and Manchester in 1830. During the 1830s local rail networks fanned out in most western European countries, and national systems were planned in the following decade, to be completed by about 1870. In communication, the invention of the telegraph allowed faster exchange of news and commercial information than ever before.
Urbanization was a vital result of growing commercialization and new industrial technology. Factory centres such as Manchester grew from villages into cities of hundreds of thousands in a few short decades. The percentage of the total population located in cities expanded steadily, and big cities tended to displace more scattered centres in western Europe’s urban map. Rapid city growth produced new hardships, for housing stock and sanitary facilities could not keep pace, though innovation responded, if slowly. Gas lighting improved street conditions in the better neighbourhoods from the 1830s onward, and sanitary reformers pressed for underground sewage systems at about this time. For the better-off, rapid suburban growth allowed some escape from the worst urban miseries.