The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transformation, beginning in 18th-century Britain, of an economy of small workshops, farms and hand tools into one dominated by machines, factories and mineral energy. Coal replaced wood and muscle; coke-smelted iron and improved steam engines powered new textile machines such as the spinning jenny and the power loom; canals, turnpike roads and then railways tied the country together. Enormous wealth was created — and with it child labour, crowded cities, and the first factory laws, as the transformation spread from Britain to the world.