Origins of the Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution, the wave of technological, economic and social changes that helped produce what we know as modern Europe, arose among back-country English cottage craftspeople in the early 1700s and fundamentally restructured industry. First, human hands were replaced by machines in the fashioning of finished products, rendering the word manufacturing, made by hand technically obsolete.No longer would the weaver sit at a hand loom and painstakingly produce each piece of cloth. Instead, large mechanical looms were invented to do the job faster and more economically. Second, human power gave way to various forms of inanimate power. The machines were driven by water power, the burning of fossil fuels, and later by hydroelectricity and the energy of the atom. Men and women, once the proud producers of fine handmade goods, became tenders of machines. Within a century and a half of its beginnings, this economic revolution had greatly altered industrial activity.

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The initial breakthrough came in the secondary, or manufacturing sector. More exactly, it occurred in the British cotton textile industry, centered at that time in the district of Lancashire in western England. At first the changes were modest and on a small scale. Mechanical looms were invented, and flowing water, long used as a source of power by local grain millers, was harnessed to drive the looms. During this stage, manufacturing industries remained largely rural, diffusing to sites where rushing streams could be found, especially waterfalls and rapids. Later in the eighteenth century the invention of the steam engine provided a better source of power, and a shift away from water-powered machines occurred. In the United States, too, the first factories were textile plants.

Metallurgy was also affected. Traditionally, metal industries had been small-scale, rural enterprises, carried on in small forges (fireplaces where metals were heated and shaped) situated near ore deposits. Forests provided charcoal for the smelting process in which ores were melted and fused. The chemical changes that occurred in the making of steel remained mysterious even to the people who made steel, and much ritual superstition and ceremony were associated with steelmaking. Techniques had changed little in 2, 500years. The Industrial Revolution radically altered all this. In the eighteenth century, a series of inventions by iron makers allowed the old traditions, techniques, and rituals of steelmaking to be swept away and replaced with scientific, large-scale industry. Coke, nearly pure carbon derived from high-grade coal, was substituted for charcoal in the smelting process. Large blast furnaces replaced the forge, and efficient rolling mills took the place of hammer and anvil. Mass production of steel resulted, and the new industrial order was built of steel. Other manufacturing industries made similar transitions and entirely new types arose, such as machine-making.

Primary industries-those that gather or extract raw materials-were also revolutionized. The first to feel the effects of the new technology was coal mining. The adoption of the steam engine necessitated huge amounts of coal to fire the boilers and the conversion to coke in the smelting process further increased the demand for coal. Fortunately, Great Britain had large coal deposits. New mining techniques and tools were invented, so that coal mining became a large-scale, mechanized activity. Coal, heavy and bulky, was difficult to transport. As a result, manufacturing industries began flocking to the coalfields in order to be near the supply. Similar modernization occurred in the mining of iron ore, copper, and other metals needed by rapidly growing industries.

The Industrial Revolution also affected the tertiary(service) sector, most notably in the form of rapid bulk transportation. The traditional wooden sailing ships gave way to steel vessels driven by steam engines, canals were built, and the British-invented railroad came on the scene. The principal stimulus that led to these transportation breakthroughs was the need to move raw materials and finished products from one place to another, both cheaply and quickly. The impact of the Industrial Revolution would have been minimized had not the distribution of goods and services also been improved, It is no accident that the British, creators of the Industrial Revolution, also invented the railroad, initiated the first large-scale canal construction and revolutionized the shipbuilding industry.