Some consider it to be a bad time, some consider this to be a good time. It drastically increased the production of everyone and everything in the world, spurned massive scientific development, as well as raised the economy of the world to unprecedented levels. What am I talking about? The Industrial Revolution, of course!
The Industrial Revolution was a time in which machines started to replace man, making new chemical manufacturing processes and iron production processes, as well as develop water power, steam power, and the rise of the factory system.
It allowed people to create more stuff, with better quality, and finally, bigger stuff as well. Just look at the steamboat! First, it chugged at 3 miles in a river, shivering and quacking all over. Then they became sturdier and could travel faster down that same river without half as much of that shivering and quacking. Finally, you saw incredibly large ocean-going steam ships transporting people, food, and mail across the ocean.
Although this isn’t very well known, there are actually two stages to the Industrial Revolution. The first one is, aptly named, the First Industrial Revolution, and the second one is also aptly named the Second Industrial Revolution.
The way this essay is going to be laid out is that the first part is going to be the about both Industrial Revolutions. The second part is going to be an economical overview of the Industrial Revolution, and finally, the third part is going to be a conclusion and my hopes for the future
There were many industries that were greatly benefited from these developments, but there are three that increased the most, or developed the most. They are the textile manufacturing, the steam power revolution, and the iron making enhancements.
The textile industry is probably as old as time. Humans always wanted something that could cover them up and add an extra layer of protection against the elements. Soon, humans realized that they could gain more attention if they looked good, and clothes started to get more fashionable ever since.
There was once a time, before the Industrial Revolution, that spinning and weaving cotton or other textile materials used to be done in households for either domestic consumption or to sell to some merchant, who would usually provide for the materials.
Several notable inventions were made in the 18th century, one of them being the flying shuttle. Created by John Kay in 1733, it allowed a weaver to weave much wider fabrics, and this process could then be automatized, meaning that it could be done automatically.
A commonly used invention was the spinning wheel. The process of spinning basically meant taking natural or synthetic fibers and spinning them into yarn, which would then be used for creating rugs, mats, and clothes. This device was an archaic invention, having been developed in the High Middle Ages, and some nationalities even have similar inventions going back as late as the 10th century!
Alas, as the fate of many devices was, it was replaced by the spinning frame. It allowed a mechanized way of spinning yarn, and increased output dramatically. It was also developed by John Kay, but in partnership with Richard Arkwright. It used water power to make it work, due to the fact that it was incredibly large. This gave rise to the nickname “water frame.”
The next big invention, which occurred in 1764, was created by James Hargreaves. It was called the spinning jenny, and was a multi-spindled apparatus that was mainly used by home spinners. Since it only loosely twisted the yarn, it was only good for weft, and not warp. Weft and warp are basically two different kinds of yarn that’s used when weaving both entwining to create a crosshatch pattern, with the weft usually going up and around the warp, which is stretched taught across the frame or loom.
After it cam many, many, many different inventions, such as Samuel Crompton’s spinning mule, the power loom, and the cotton gin. All of these were created by entrepreneurs, something that everyone should keep in mind, for later in this essay.
Moving on to metallurgy. The first big change in the metal industry occurred when people realized that coal is a way better alternative than other bio-fuels that were used at that time. It was one, more abundant, and two, required less labor to mine than cutting wood.
This use of coal started a little bit before the industrial revolution, and was quickly replaced by coke, which was a much cheaper and better than coal. Back then, in the beginning of the 1700’s, most of the iron that was produced using coke was produced for cast iron goods, meaning pots and kettles, until the mid-1750’s. Then, people also started using it for wrought iron forges.
Afterwards, came also more inventions, including the better method of forging wrought iron, with was puddling and rolling, with rolling coming first in 1783 and puddling coming next in 1784. Rolling basically replaced hammering with its effectiveness. The entire idea is to roll metal bars through two rolling cylinders, which flattens the piece of metal out evenly, as well as remove some of the impurities that arise from the smelting of iron.
In wet puddling, I don’t really quite get how this works, but I’m going to give it my best shot. In puddling, you basically re-melt metal in a giant basin that’s coated in oxides to help with combustion and protect the actual basin from melting.
This metal is constantly stirred with long bars with hooks on the end. These bars are called rabbles. While this process is going on, the slag, or impurities that you don’t want in your metal, all bubble up to the top, and then are drained off so that you have metal all by itself. Unfortunately, puddling required human skill in sensing the iron globs, and never was successfully mechanized.
The next big development was the hot blast, which used the waste exhaust gasses to preheat the combustion air, and the fuel consumption was driven down with this ingenious invention by James Beaumont Neilson in 1828. The Industrial Revolution continued on in its splendor, and in the 1800’s made steel, a pricey commodity, cheap.
Finally, we come down to steam power. Although when we think of the Industrial Revolution, we think of smoke-stacks billowing smoke, and the same thing happening on trains and ships, this wasn’t always the case. During the early phases of the Industrial Revolution, most everything was powered by either water or wind.
By 1800, though, this had all changed, especially in Britain. Although he didn’t invent it (that was Thomas Newcomen’s achievement), the famous and prolific inventor James Watt improved dramatically on the design of the steam engine, allowing it to be produced more in 1781, 19 years later Britain was using an estimated 10,000 horse power was being supplied by steam. In 1815, just 15 years later, the figure shot up over 20 times, becoming an estimated 210,000 horse power.
With these discoveries of steam and its potential, machine tools, such as engine lathes, planning, and milling machines were increasingly being powered by steam, instead of animals or water, resulting in cleaner and more precise cutting of metal, with the end product being very precise and clean cut steam engines.
Although I didn’t mention it earlier, there is one more part to the Industrial Revolution, and that’s something that’s been mentioned in the above paragraph. This aspect of the Industrial Revolution is the explosion in the demand for machine tools.
Most of these tools were used to cut metal, because there was an increase in the demand for metal parts used in other machinery. This was a huge advancement in the economy, due to the fact that before these machine tools that could shape iron and steel, most of the parts that could be replaced with wood were replaced with it, because the two metals that I mentioned in the last sentence were shaped by hand using hammers, chisels, saws, and the like.
The problem with wood is that with temperature and humidity, it can deform, especially if it’s under a lot of pressure. Also, it could tend to work itself loose over time, meaning that companies and businesses were constantly spending money to replace their overworked wooden parts.
The first large machine tool to have been used was the boring machine, which was used for boring (obviously) the large-diameter cylinders on the early steam engines (they also used pistons). After this machine followed the planning, milling, and shaping machines in the early decades of the 1800’s.
Finally, let’s talk about the economic benefits and supposed minuses that have occurred due to the fact that this period of historic progress.
The first one is that international borders were for the first time removed, because ships could now access each other, carrying news that wasn’t a month or two old, but was a little over a week old. The lower classes prospered, due to the fact that now they were being paid more and producing more.
On to the question of child labor. Although I personally am a child, and think that child labor is something that should be avoided, it would’ve naturally phased out as the parents would no longer need the help of their children to support the family, and instead, the father and/or the mother could do it
themselves.
Some people say that it’s outrageous that children were paid 10-20% less than their adult equals. Well, children lack the physical strength, knowledge, and experience to name a few reasons why adults were paid more than the children were. The only advantage that children had over adults was that they were nimbler and smaller, although it probably wouldn’t have been too hard to find people that could replace them in either of those qualities.
As for the supposed “robber barons” that existed during this period, I think that this is utter baloney, and should be addressed as such.
In the first part, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and other such men might not have paid their employees more, but they sure as heck did make up for it in other benefits, meaning their constant price cutting. Even if you aren’t getting a larger paycheck, it sure does feel nice to go to a store one day and realize that the prices have been cut by almost 25%, and now you can afford 25% more than you could have before!
So in my opinion, we should think of the Industrial Age and Industrial Revolution as an incredible leap by humanity, such as the leap that we took into the digital age, something that virtually nobody is complaining about.
The Blogger 
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