The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was the process of change from an agrarian and handicraft economy to one dominated by industry and machine manufacturing.¹ It began in Britain in the 18th century and from there spread to other parts of the world.¹ These technological changes introduced novel ways of working and living and fundamentally transformed society.¹ Its main features were technological, socioeconomic and cultural.¹

The term Industrial Revolution was first popularized by the English economic historian Arnold Toynbee (1852-83) to describe Britain's economic development from 1760 to 1840.¹ Historians divide the revolution into two roughly consecutive parts.¹ The first Industrial Revolution lasted from the mid-18th century to about 1830 and was mostly confined to Britain.¹ The second lasted from the mid-19th century until the early 20th century and took place in Britain, continental Europe, North America and Japan.¹

Robert Allen argues that in Britain wages were high and capital and energy were cheap compared with other countries in Europe and Asia.² The breakthrough technologies of the industrial revolution were therefore uniquely profitable to invent and use in Britain.² These were the steam engine, the cotton mill and the substitution of coal for wood in metal production.² The high-wage economy of pre-industrial Britain also fostered industrial development, because more people could afford schooling and apprenticeships.²

Contrary to traditional views of the earlier period as one of Malthusian stagnation, GDP per capita showed a persistent upward trend and doubled between 1270 and 1700.³ The transition to modern economic growth built on those earlier foundations.³ On the eve of the Industrial Revolution, Britain was already a highly developed, commercialised and sophisticated economy.⁴ A large proportion of its labour force was engaged in non-agricultural activities.⁴

In the early 18th century, British industry was still small-scale and largely a cottage industry.⁵ Demand for coal and the changes in agriculture — cheap rural labour and urban growth — set the scene for large-scale factories.⁵ For contemporaries it was the great age of steam, canals and factories, and it changed the face of the British economy forever.⁵

The flying shuttle, invented by John Kay in 1733, represented an important step toward automatic weaving.⁶ John Kay's flying shuttle sped up weaving, leading to a demand for faster yarn production.⁷ The hand-powered spinning jenny was patented by James Hargreaves in 1770.⁸ It was an early multiple-spindle machine for spinning wool or cotton.⁸

The development of the spinning wheel into the spinning jenny was a significant factor in the industrialization of the textile industry, though its product was inferior to Richard Arkwright's water frame.⁸ Arkwright became interested in spinning machinery at least by 1764, when he began construction of his first machine, patented in 1769.⁹ His water frame, so called because it operated by waterpower, produced a cotton yarn suitable for warp.⁹ With several partners, Arkwright opened factories at Nottingham and Cromford, and within a few years he was operating factories equipped with machinery for carrying out all phases of textile manufacturing from carding to spinning.⁹

Edmund Cartwright patented the first, inadequate power-driven loom in 1785.⁷ Subsequent improvements, including dressing machines to prepare warps and better take-up motions for winding cloth, made the power loom a practical tool.⁷ The shift from water to steam power further increased the speed of these machines, solidifying the factory system for textile production.⁷ Cartwright's power loom, developed in the 1780s, allowed for the mass production of the cheap and light cloth that was desirable both in Britain and around the Empire.⁵

The modern factory owes its origins to the mills at Cromford, where Richard Arkwright's inventions were first put into industrial-scale production.¹⁰ It was not until Arkwright constructed a water-powered spinning mill at Cromford in 1771, and a second, larger mill in 1776-77, that the "Arkwright System" was truly established.¹⁰ The Derwent Valley saw the birth of the factory system, when new types of building were erected to house the new technology for spinning cotton developed by Arkwright in the late 18th century.¹⁰ Richard Arkwright's cotton factories in Nottingham and Cromford employed nearly 600 people by the 1770s, including many small children, whose nimble hands made light work of spinning.⁵ Workers' housing associated with the mills survives intact across 24 km of the Derwent valley.¹⁰

The first Industrial Revolution was carried by a small set of inventions in textiles, steam power and iron.¹ New machines such as the spinning jenny and the power loom permitted increased production with a smaller expenditure of human energy.¹

In 1698 Thomas Savery patented a pump with hand-operated valves to raise water from mines by suction produced by condensing steam.¹¹ In about 1712 another Englishman, Thomas Newcomen, developed a more efficient steam engine with a piston separating the condensing steam from the water.¹¹ Newcomen's steam-driven piston engine allowed the more efficient pumping of deep mines.⁵ By 1800 perhaps 2,000 steam engines were at work in Britain.⁵

While repairing a model Newcomen steam engine in 1764, James Watt was impressed by its waste of steam.¹² In May 1765 he arrived at the separate condenser, his first and greatest invention.¹² In 1769 Watt took out the famous patent for a method of lessening the consumption of steam and fuel in fire engines.¹² After the patent was extended by an act of Parliament, Watt and Matthew Boulton began a partnership in 1775 that lasted 25 years.¹² In 1781 Watt devised the sun-and-planet gear for rotary motion, and in 1782 he patented the double-acting engine, in which the piston pushed as well as pulled.¹² Watt's steam engine opened an entirely new field of application, enabling steam engines to operate rotary machines in factories such as cotton mills.¹²

It was in Coalbrookdale in 1709 that the Quaker Abraham Darby I developed the production technique of smelting iron with coke, which began the great 18th-century iron revolution.¹⁷ The blast furnace of Coalbrookdale, built in 1708, stands as a reminder of the discovery of coke.¹⁷ The Iron Bridge is the first known metal bridge, built in 1779 by Abraham Darby III from the drawings of the architect Thomas Farnolls Pritchard.¹⁷ The bridge at Ironbridge, the first bridge constructed of iron, had a considerable influence on developments in the fields of technology and architecture.¹⁷ Ironbridge is known throughout the world as the symbol of the Industrial Revolution.¹⁷ The Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage property covers 5.5 square kilometres (550 ha) at Telford, Shropshire, approximately 50 km north-west of Birmingham.¹⁷

In 1760 Roebuck introduced at the Carron ironworks a new kind of blast furnace by which iron ore could be smelted with coal as fuel, and in 1790 the steam engine was introduced to cause the blast.¹⁸ In 1783 Henry Cort obtained a patent for grooved rollers that produced iron bars more quickly and economically than the old methods of hammering, and the following year he patented his puddling process for converting pig iron into wrought iron.¹³ Cort's two inventions together had a tremendous effect on the iron-making industry in Britain; in the next 20 years British iron production quadrupled.¹³ Demand from iron smelting and steam engines drove coal output to more than ten million tons a year before the 18th century closed.¹⁸ In 1815 Davy's safety lamp was introduced to make mining safer.¹⁸

In 1761 the Duke of Bridgewater opened a canal between his colliery at Worsley and the rapidly growing town of Manchester.⁵ Within weeks of the canal's opening, the price of coal in Manchester halved.⁵ By 1815, over 2,000 miles of canals were in use in Britain, carrying raw materials and manufactured goods by horse-drawn barge.⁵

New techniques in road construction, developed by pioneering engineers such as John McAdam and Thomas Telford, transformed the turnpike roads and led to the great road boom of the 1780s.⁵ The gains made by 18th-century road builders were remarkable.⁵ By the 1830s the stagecoach journey from London to Edinburgh took just two days, compared to nearly two weeks only half a century before.⁵

Richard Trevithick had completed the first successful steam-powered locomotive to haul a load on rails in 1804, long before the Stephensons' engine.¹⁵ On 27 September 1825, the first public passenger train, pulled by Stephenson's Locomotion, ran from Darlington to Stockton, transporting 450 people at 15 miles per hour, marking the birth of railway transportation.¹⁴ The Rainhill trials ran over nine days in October 1829 on a purpose-built line outside Liverpool, drawing over 10,000 spectators on the first day alone.¹⁵ Stephenson's Rocket, built with his son Robert, won the competition held as the Liverpool and Manchester line neared completion in 1829 and achieved a speed of 36 miles per hour.¹⁴ Investors saw the potential, and in a few short years Britain was in the grip of Railway Mania.¹⁵

Many factories were dismal and dangerous places, likened by contemporaries to prisons.⁵ A working day of 12 hours was not uncommon, and accidents happened frequently.⁵ Children from workhouses worked hot, dusty shifts between fast-moving machines.⁵

As the Industrial Revolution gathered pace, thousands of unregulated factories sprang up all over the country.¹⁶ Dangerous machinery was used that could, and frequently did, cause serious injuries to workers.¹⁶ Perhaps one of the worst features of this new industrial age was the use of child labour.¹⁶ Very young children worked extremely long hours and could be severely punished for any mistakes.¹⁶

The factory system involved the adoption of machinery and artificial power, the use of a vastly greater amount of capital, and the collection of scattered labourers into great, strictly regulated establishments.¹⁸ The change was, comparatively speaking, sudden, all its main features having been developed within the period between 1760 and 1800; and it resulted in the raising of many new and difficult social problems.¹⁸ With the growth of factories and the increase in the size of business establishments, the employer and employee came to be farther apart, while at the same time the employees in any one establishment or trade were thrown more closely together.¹⁸ Trade unions naturally sprang up against the last Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800, which were an undisguised exercise of the power of the employing class to legislate in their own interest through Parliament.¹⁸

In 1833 the Government passed a Factory Act to improve conditions for children working in factories.¹⁶ Young children had been working very long hours in workplaces where conditions were often terrible.¹⁶ The 1833 Act limited children aged 9-13 to no more than nine hours of work a day.¹⁶ It limited children aged 13-18 to no more than 12 hours a day.¹⁶ Under the Act, children were not to work at night.¹⁶ Two hours of schooling each day were required for the children.¹⁶ No child workers under nine were to be employed in the textile mills, and four factory inspectors were appointed to enforce the law.¹⁶

Passing the Act did not stop mistreatment overnight.¹⁶ Enforcement depended on the four factory inspectors appointed under the Act.¹⁶ Inspectors' reports of 1836 and 1867 show how far enforcement fell short.¹⁶

The second Industrial Revolution lasted from the mid-19th century until the early 20th century, in Britain, continental Europe, North America and Japan.¹ Its industries were electricity, steel and chemicals, and its emblematic products included the light bulb, the telephone, the internal-combustion engine and mass-produced automobiles.¹ New energy sources including electricity, petroleum and the internal-combustion engine joined coal and steam.¹

It was only when British engineers made the new technologies more cost-effective during the 19th century that the industrial revolution would spread around the world.² China and India did not begin their first industrial revolutions until the 20th century.²

Findings published in the 1990s by Crafts and Harley and others reduced estimates of the rate of economic growth during the classic years of the industrial revolution, 1760 to 1830.⁴ As a macroeconomic phenomenon, Mokyr writes, the Industrial Revolution in its classical years stands today diminished and weakened.⁴ It is now also widely realised that the Industrial Revolution was not the same thing as industrialisation.⁴ For all that, the classic economic history judges the term Industrial Revolution neither exaggerated nor unsuitable for the transformation it names.¹⁸

The Industrial Revolution increased the overall amount of wealth and distributed it more widely than had been the case in earlier centuries, helping to enlarge the middle class.¹ Workers acquired new and distinctive skills, and instead of being craftsmen working with hand tools they became machine operators, subject to factory discipline.¹ The replacement of the domestic system of industrial production with the factory system and mass production consigned large numbers of people, including women and children, to long hours of tedious and often dangerous work at subsistence wages.¹ Their miserable conditions gave rise to the trade union movement in the mid-19th century.¹

The passages below are quoted verbatim from the sources, from the pin factory to the historians' reckoning.¹⁹