This is probably one of the most intense questions I've read to date here on Yahoo Answers. If you are seeking literature based on technology for all the years in between, then you will need to locate a technological magazine or journal that discusses the various years of industrialization.
To begin with some basics however, just look around you, from paper that is produced by trees to clocks that have progressed through history. In the late 1000s, do you realize that clocks told time by liquids and crystals. Certain gems can read light and therefore it becomes leveled in a clock's weight system, having mechanisms react to the time differences. Paper, for instance as well, was originally really rough, scratchy, and mostly yellow and gray in color. After centuries of technological growth, paper was soon discovered that it could be controled and therefore, smoothed out, certain chemicals could be installed to preserve its texture, and eventually all types of writing utensils could be used upon its surface.
Other types of industrialization, like the production of metal in forging lathes and blacksmiths shops help to form some if not most of todays technologies. From some of the very first swords and sabers to fight in battle to todays swords that are casted and forged for military officers alike throughout the world. Except, the difference in today's world, is that we rarely use swords or officer's sabers to fight, they are usually used just for ceremonial gatherings and parades. Metal in ancient times, all the way up to early 1900s was used for weaponry, building goods, jewelry, and especially for medical purposes.
The way architecture was developed in 1 AD helped to shape some of today's most revolutionary designs in the modern world. Designs from ancient Egypt, India, Serbia, Cameroon and even Chile are all used in the modern society of culture. Many hospitals, prisons, schools, fire departments, medical facilities all capture a bit of architecture from yesteryear in many of its structural formations. Sometimes, it's visible to the naked eye, while other times, we don't always see it.
If you are searching for details more along the lines of dates, the perhaps I can be assistance here as well.
The history of technology is the history of useful tools and techniques for doing practical things. It is intimately related with the history of science, which includes how humans have acquired the background knowledge necessary to build useful things. Scientific endeavors have, especially in modern times, usually depended on specific technologies which assist humans to probe the nature of the universe in more detail than our natural senses allow.
Technological artifacts are products of an economy, a force for economic growth, and a large part of everyday life. Technological innovations affect, and are affected by, a society's cultural traditions. They also are a means to develop and project military power.
The wheel was invented circa 4000 BC, and has become one of the world's most famous, and most useful technologies. This wheel is on display in The National Museum of Iran, in Tehran.)
Early technology --- :
Fire used since the paleolithic, possibly by Homo erectus as early as 1.5 Million years ago
Clothing possibly 100,000 years ago.
Stone tools, used by Homo floresiensis, possibly 100,000 years ago.
Domestication of Animals, ca. 15,000 BC
Pottery ca. 11th millennium BC
Bow, sling ca. 9th millennium BC
Microliths ca. 9th millennium BC
Copper ca. 8000 BC
Agriculture and Plough ca. 8000 BC
Wheel ca. 4000 BC
Gnomon ca. 4000 BC
Writing systems ca. 3500 BC
Bronze ca. 3300 BC
Salt
Chariot ca. 2000 BC
Iron ca. 1500 BC
Sundial ca. 800 BC
Catapult ca. 400 BC
Horseshoe ca. 300 BC
Stirrup first few centuries AD
Prehistoric times --- :
Although, by definition, no writing records were made in prehistoric time, we can get some insight as to how the world, and its mechanisms, was understood or interpreted by prehistoric man by direct and indirect evidence. Direct evidence includes cave paintings that were found in Spain and France, and some other artistic works, for example the Venus of Willendorf. Other direct evidence are bones (for example trepanation), mummies and ancient tools[1]. Despite the relative lack of direct evidence of knowledge owned by prehistoric man, the surviving technologies of prehistory may also be used to conjecture as to the understanding of the world in that era.
Survival was the first order of business; even today, with the great tsunami of 2004, Andaman Islanders remembered the advice of their forebears, took to the high ground, and survived the tsunami, as their ancestors have since time immemorial. These peoples recounted this knowledge to the crews of the rescue aircraft who were hovering over the Andaman Islands, after the aircraft were attacked by their arrows.
Although there is no written record of technological innovation for some peoples or cultures, there is some evidence for their achievements in exploration: for example, the Malay people spread across the Malay archipelago, across the Indian ocean to Madagascar and also across the Pacific ocean, which required knowledge of the ocean currents, the winds, sailing, the movement of the stars, celestial navigation, and star maps. The star maps were not made of paper, but were lashed together with strings, sticks and shells. Their outrigger ships were ocean-worthy, thousands of years ago, well before the maritime technology of the West was capable of the age of exploration.
Before them, likely by hunting and gathering, the Indigenous Australians and the Native Americans followed the contours of the continents to populate their parts of the world - a journey of tens of thousands of kilometers, and which may have taken thousands of years.
Ancient Egypt --- :
The Egyptians invented and used many simple machines, such as the ramp and the lever, to aid their construction processes. Egyptian paper made from papyrus and pottery was mass produced and exported to the entire Mediterranean basin. The wheel, however, did not arrive until foreign invaders introduced the chariot.
Tribal Europe --- :
By 1000 BC - 500 BC the Germanic tribes had a bronze age civilization, while the Celts were in the iron age by the time of the Hallstatt culture. Their cultures next collided with the military and agricultural practices of the Romans, two millennia ago. But the time and resources which are needed to conduct science had to build up gradually.
Ancient Greece
The Greeks invented a large number of new technologies and greatly improved a lot of technologies invented before. The period of fastest technological progress in antiquity was the Hellenistic period.
Heron of Alexandria invented a steam engine and documented the use of many mechanic, pneumatic and other devices. Archimedes invented several machines. The Greeks were the only civilization in pre-industrial times to combine scientific research with the development of new technologies. One example is the Archimedes Screw; this technology was first conceptualized in mathematics, then it was built. Other technologies which the Greek scientists invented using the scientific method include the ballistae, primitive analog computers like the Antikythera mechanism and the piston pump.
Ancient Rome --- :
The civilization of Rome included technology for:
intensive agriculture
ironworking
laws providing for individual ownership
stonemasonry
road-building
military engineering
civil engineering
spinning and weaving
Because Rome was located on a volcanic peninsula, with sand which contained suitable crystalline grains, the concrete which the Romans formulated and invented was especially durable. Some of their buildings have lasted 2000 years, to the present day.
The Romans understood hydraulics and constructed fountains and waterworks which were the hallmark of their civilization. Some Roman baths, in England for example, have lasted to this day.
The Romans developed the most advanced set of technologies for their time, and many of their technologies were only reinvented in the 19th century and 20th century.
Ancient India --- :
The Indus Valley Civilization situated suitably, with a lot of resources, was a lesson in city planning and sanitation. One of the first examples of closed 'gutters', public baths, granaries etc. are seen here.
The Takshashila University was an important seat of learning in the ancient world. It was the center of education for scholars from all over Asia. Many Greek, Persian and Chinese students studied here under great scholars - Kautilya, Panini, Jivaka, Vishnu Sharma.
A panel found at Mohenjodaro, depicting a sailing craft. Vessels were of many types. Their construction is vividly described in the Yukti Kalpa Taru, an ancient Indian text on Ship-building.
Indian construction and architecture called 'Vaastu Shastra' offered details and plans based on scientific principles like Strength of Materials, ideal height of construction, presence of adequate sources of water, light hence preserving hygiene. It is one of the first building science to be so all-inclusive.
The Yukti Kalpa Taru, compiled by Bhoja Narapati is concerned with ship-building. (The Yukti Kalpa Taru (YKT) had been translated and published by Prof. Aufrecht in his 'Catalogue of Sanskrit Manuscripts').
Ancient Indian culture has always been diverse in its choice of spices, condiments and ornamental items, hence India was the origin of palm and coconut oil, indigo and other vegetable dyes and pigments like cinnabar. Many of the dyes were used in art and sculpture. The use of perfumes demonstrates some knowledge of the application of technologies used in chemistry, particularly in distillation and purification processes.
Ancient China --- :
According to the Scottish researcher Joseph Needham, the Chinese made a great many first-known discoveries and developments. Major technological contributions from China include early seismological detectors, matches, paper, sliding calipers, the double-action piston pump, cast iron, the iron plough, the multi-tube seed drill, the wheelbarrow, the suspension bridge, the parachute, natural gas as fuel, the magnetic compass, the relief map, the propeller, the crossbow, and gun powder.
Medieval China --- :
The solid-fuel rocket was invented in China about 1150, about 200 years after the invention of black powder (which was its main fuel) and 500 years after the invention of the match. At the same time that the age of exploration was occurring in the West, the Chinese emperors of the Ming Dynasty also sent ships, some reaching Africa. But the enterprises were not further funded, halting further exploration and development. When Magellan's ships reached Brunei in 1521, they found a wealthy city that had been fortified by Chinese engineers, protected by a breakwater. Antonio Pigafetta noted that much of the technology of Brunei was equal to Western technology of the time. Also, there were more cannons in Brunei than on Magellan's ships, and the Chinese merchants to the Brunei court had sold them spectacles and porcelain, which were rarities in Europe. The scientific base for these technological developments appears to be quite thin, however. For example, the concept of force was not clearly formulated in Chinese texts of the period.
Other Chinese discoveries and inventions from the Medieval period, according to Joseph Needham's research, include: the paddle wheel boat, block printing and movable type, phosphorescent paint, chain drive, and the spinning wheel.
Inca --- :
The engineering skills of the Inca were great, even by today's standards. An example is the use of pieces weighing in upwards of one ton in their stonework (e.g., Machu Picchu in Peru), placed together so that not even a blade can fit in-between the cracks. The villages used irrigation canals and drainage systems, making agriculture very efficient.
It is said that the Incas were the first inventors of hydroponics, which they used to grow crops in great number whilst reducing land usage, thus revealing the geographical ability to plan land.
Maya --- :
The Maya civilization did not smelt metals or use the wheel; they possessed a system of writing and amazing fluency with flint-knapping including portraiture in flint.
European --- :
The fall of the Roman Empire slowed innovation in some areas while in many other areas a huge amount of technology was lost (such as the technology to make concrete). By the fall of Rome, heavy chain armor was in general use by the armies of Rome as the lorica segmentata armor fell out of use, and for nearly a thousand years afterward, until it was substituted by plate armor.
Timekeeping --- :
At first, timekeeping was done by hand, by priests, and then for commerce, with watchmen to note time, as part of their duties. The tabulation of the equinoxes, the sandglass, and the water clock became more and more accurate, and finally reliable.
For ships at sea, boys were used to turn the sandglasses, and to call the hours.
The use of the pendulum, ratchets and gears allowed the towns of Europe to create mechanisms to display the time on their respective town clocks; by the time of the scientific revolution, the clocks became miniaturized enough for families to share a personal clock, or perhaps a pocket watch. At first, only kings could afford them.
Age of Exploration --- :
The sailing ship (Nau or Carrack) enabled the Age of Exploration with the European colonization of the Americas, epitomized by Francis Bacon's New Atlantis.
Medieval technology --- :
During the 12th and 13th century in Europe there was a radical change in the rate of new inventions, innovations in the ways of managing traditional means of production, and economic growth. The period saw major technological advances, including the invention or adoption through the Silk Road of printing, gunpowder, the astrolabe, spectacles, and greatly improved water mills, building techniques, agriculture in general, clocks, and ships. The latter advances made possible the dawn of the Age of Exploration.
Alfred Crosby described some of this technological revolution in The Measure of Reality : Quantification in Western Europe, 1250-1600 and other major historians of Technology have also noted it.
European technical advancements of the 14th and 15th centuries were usually not native to Europe, but cross cultural exchanges through trading networks with the east, such as Chinese or Arab civilizations. Yet, the revolutionary aspect lay not in the inventions themselves, but in their application to political and economic power. Though gunpowder had long been known to the Chinese, it was the Europeans who fully realized its military potential, precipitating European expansion and eventual imperialism in the Modern Era. Also significant in this respect were advances within the fields of navigation. The compass, astrolabe and sextant, along with advances in shipbuilding, enabled the navigation of the World Oceans and thus domination of the worlds economic trade. Gutenberg’s printing press made possible a dissemination of knowledge to a wider population, that would not only lead to a gradually more egalitarian society, but one more able to dominate other cultures, drawing from a vast reserve of knowledge and experience.
Arabic Numerals ................. 13th century;
First recorded mention in Europe 976, first widely published in 1202 by Leonardo of Pisa with his Liber Abaci.
Artesian wells ...................... 1126;
A thin rod with a hard iron cutting edge is placed in the bore hole and repeatedly struck with a hammer, underground water pressure forces the water up the hole without pumping. Artesian wells are named after the town of Artois in France, where the first one was drilled by Carthusian monks in 1126.
Cannons ............................. 1324;
Documented in China from 1128, cannons are first recorded in Europe at the siege of Metz in 1324. In 1350 Petrarch wrote "these instruments which discharge balls of metal with most tremendous noise and flashes of fire...were a few years ago very rare and were viewed with greatest astonishment and admiration, but now they are become as common and familiar as any other kinds of arms."
Compass ........................ 12th century;
The first mention of the directional compass is in Alexander Neckam's On the Natures of Things, written in Paris around 1190. Transmitted directly from China via the Silk Road, Arabs learned about it from Europeans soon after.
Grindstones ..................... 834;
Rough stone, usually sandstone, used to sharpen Iron. A long and difficult process, the first rotary grindstone (turned with a leveraged handle) in Medieval Europe occurs in the Utrecht Psalter.
Liquor ...............................12th century;
By way of Islamic alchemists, initially used as medicinal elixir. Popular remedy for the Black Death during 14th century; "national" drinks like vodka, gin, brandy come into form.
Heavy plough ................... 5th to 8th century;
The heavy wheeled plow with a moldboard first appears in the 5th century in Slavic lands, is then introduced into Northern Italy (the Po valley) and by the 8th century it was used in the Rhineland. Essential in the efficient use of the rich, heavy, often wet soils of Northern Europe, its use allowed the area's forests and swamps to be brought under cultivation.
Hops ............................. 10th century;
Added to beer, importance lay primarily in its ability to preserve beer.
Horizontal loom .............. 11th century;
Horizontal and operated by foot-treadles, faster and more efficient.
Horse collar..................... 6th to 9th century;
Multiple evolutions from Classical Harness (Antiquity), to Breast
Strap Harness................. (6th century) to Horse collar (9th century). Allowed more horse pulling power, such as with heavy ploughs.
Horseshoes...................... 9th century;
Allowed horse to adapt to non-grassland terrains in Europe (rocky terrain, mountains) and carry heavier loads. Possibly known to the Romans and Celts as early as 50 BC.
Magnets..................... 12th century;
First reference in the Roman d'Enéas, composed between 1155 and 1160.
Mirrors........................ 1180;
First mention of "glass" mirror in 1180 by Alexander Neckham who said "Take away the lead which is behind the glass and there will be no image of the one looking in."
Paper.......................... 10th century;
Invented in China, transmitted through Islamic Spain to Europe in the 10th century.
Rat traps...................... 1170s;
First mention of a rat trap in the medieval romance Yvain, the Knight of the Lion by Chrétien de Troyes.
Stern-mounted rudders......... 12th century;
First depiction on church carvings dating to around 1180, about a thousand years after its invention in China.
Silk........................ 11th to 12th centuries;
Manufacture of silk began in 11th or 12th centuries. Imported over the Silk Road since Antiquity. Technnology of "silk throwing" mastered in Tuscany in the 13th century. The silk works used waterpower and some regard these as the first mechanized textile mills.
Spinning wheel............... 13th century;
Brought to Europe probably from India.
Soap..................... 9th century;
Soap came into widespread European use in the 9th century in semi-liquid form, with hard soap perfected by Arabs in the 12th century.
Spectacles............. 1285 Florence, Italy.
Convex lenses, of help only to the far-sighted. Concave lenses were not developed prior to the 16th century.
Stirrups................... 8th century;
Invented in China in the 5th century and transmitted through Asia to Europe by the 8th. Allowed mounted knight to wield and strike from a distance with a lance, leading to a great advantage for mounted cavalry.
Tidal Mills................. 12th century;
Medieval invention, harnessed power of tides to turn grain mills.
Wheelbarrow........... 13th century;
Appearing first in a drawing by Matthew Paris in the 13th century.
Windmills.................. 12th century;
Post mill invented in Europe, first surviving mention of one comes from Yorkshire in England in 1185. Efficient at grinding grain.
Industrial Revolution --- :
The Industrial Revolution was the major technological, socioeconomic and cultural change in the late 18th and early 19th century that began in Britain and spread throughout the world. During that time, an economy based on manual labour was replaced by one dominated by industry and the manufacture of machinery. It began with the mechanisation of the textile industries and the development of iron-making techniques, and trade expansion was enabled by the introduction of canals, improved roads and then railways. The introduction of steam power (fuelled primarily by coal) and powered machinery (mainly in textile manufacturing) underpinned the dramatic increases in production capacity. The development of all-metal machine tools in the first two decades of the 19th century facilitated the manufacture of more production machines for manufacturing in other industries.
The period of time covered by the Industrial Revolution varies with different historians. Eric Hobsbawm held that it 'broke out' in the 1780s and wasn't fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s, while T.S. Ashton held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830 (in effect the reigns of George III, The Regency, and George IV).
The effects spread throughout Western Europe and North America during the 19th century, eventually affecting most of the world. The impact of this change on society was enormous and is often compared to the Neolithic revolution, when various human subgroups embraced agriculture and in the process, forswore the nomadic lifestyle.
The first Industrial Revolution merged into the Second Industrial Revolution around 1850, when technological and economic progress gained momentum with the development of steam-powered ships, railways, and later in the nineteenth century with the internal combustion engine and electrical power generation. At the turn of the century, innovator Henry Ford, father of the assembly line, stated, "There is but one rule for the industrialist, and that is: Make the highest quality goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible."
It has been argued that GDP per capita was much more stable and progressed at a much slower rate until the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the modern capitalist economy, and that it has since increased rapidly in capitalist countries.
The idea and the name
The term 'Industrial Revolution' applied to technological change was common in the 1830s. Louis-Auguste Blanqui in 1837 spoke of la révolution industrielle. Friedrich Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 spoke of "an industrial revolution, a revolution which at the same time changed the whole of civil society".
The radical nature of the process had been noted before that, in his book Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society Raymond Williams states in the entry for Industry: The idea of a new social order based on major industrial change was clear in Southey and Owen, between 1811 and 1818, and was implicit as early as Blake in the early 1790s and Wordsworth at the turn of the century.
Credit for popularising the term may be given to Arnold Toynbee, whose lectures given in 1881 gave a detailed account of the process.
Causes
The causes of the Industrial Revolution were complex and remain a topic for debate, with some historians seeing the Revolution as an outgrowth of social and institutional changes brought by the end of feudalism in Britain after the English Civil War in the 17th century. As national border controls became more effective, the spread of disease was lessened, therefore preventing the epidemics common in previous times. The percentage of children who lived past infancy rose significantly, leading to a larger workforce. The Enclosure movement and the British Agricultural Revolution made food production more efficient and less labour-intensive, encouraging the surplus population who could no longer find employment in agriculture into cottage industry, for example weaving, and in the longer term into the cities and the newly-developed factories. The colonial expansion of the 17th century with the accompanying development of international trade, creation of financial markets and accumulation of capital are also cited as factors, as is the scientific revolution of the 17th century.
Technological innovation protected by patents (by the Statute of Monopolies 1623) was, of course, at the heart of it and the key enabling technology was the invention and improvement of the steam engine.
The presence of a large domestic market should also be considered an important driver of the Industrial Revolution, particularly explaining why it occurred in Britain. In other nations, such as France, markets were split up by local regions, which often imposed tolls and tariffs on goods traded amongst them.
Causes for occurrence in Europe
One question of active interest to historians is why the Industrial Revolution started in 18th century Europe and not other times like in Ancient Greece, which already had developed a primitive steam engine, and other parts of the world in the 18th century, particularly China and India.
Numerous factors have been suggested, including ecology, government, and culture. Benjamin Elman argues that China was in a high level equilibrium trap in which the non-industrial methods were efficient enough to prevent use of industrial methods with high costs of capital. Kenneth Pomeranz, in the Great Divergence, argues that Europe and China were remarkably similar in 1700, and that the crucial differences which created the Industrial Revolution in Europe were sources of coal near manufacturing centres, and raw materials such as food and wood from the New World, which allowed Europe to expand economically in a way that China could not.
However, modern estimates of per capita income in Western Europe in the late 18th century are of roughly 1,500 dollars in purchasing power parity (and Britain had a per capita income of nearly 2,000 dollars ) whereas China, by comparison, had only 450 dollars. Also, the average interest rate was about 5% in Britain and over 30% in China, which illustrates how capital was much more abundant in Britain; capital that was available for investment.
Some historians credit the different belief systems in China and Europe with dictating where the revolution occurred. The religion and beliefs of Europe were largely products of Christianity, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Conversely, Chinese society was founded on men like Confucius, Mencius, Han Feizi (Legalism), Lao Tzu (Taoism), and Buddha (Buddhism). The key difference between these belief systems was that those from Europe focused on the individual, while Chinese beliefs centered around relationships between people. The family unit was more important than the individual for the large majority of Chinese history, and this may have played a role in why the Industrial Revolution took much longer to occur in China. There was the additional difference as to whether people looked backwards to a reputedly glorious past for answers to their questions or looked hopefully to the future. Furthermore, Western European peoples had experienced the Renaissance and Reformation; other parts of the world had not had a similar intellectual breakout, a condition that holds true even into the 21st century.
In India, the noted historian Rajni Palme Dutt has been quoted as saying, "The capital to finance the Industrial Revolution in India instead went into financing the Industrial Revolution in England." In direct contrast to China, India was split up into many different kingdoms all fighting for supremacy, with the three major ones being the Marathas, Sikhs and the Mughals. In addition, the economy was highly dependent on two sectors--agriculture of subsistence and cotton, and technical innovation was non-existent. The vast amounts of wealth were stored away in palace treasuries, and as such, were easily moved to Britain.
Causes for occurrence in Britain
The debate about the start of the Industrial Revolution also concerns the massive lead that Britain had over other countries. Some have stressed the importance of natural or financial resources that Britain received from its many overseas colonies or that profits from the British slave trade between Africa and the Caribbean helped fuel industrial investment. It has been pointed out however that slavery provided only 5% of the British national income during the years of the Industrial Revolution.
Alternatively, the greater liberalisation of trade from a large merchant base may have allowed Britain to produce and utilise emerging scientific and technological developments more effectively than countries with stronger monarchies, particularly China and Russia. Britain emerged from the Napoleonic Wars as the only European nation not ravaged by financial plunder and economic collapse, and possessing the only merchant fleet of any useful size (European merchant fleets having been destroyed during the war by the Royal Navy). Britain's extensive exporting cottage industries also ensured markets were already available for many early forms of manufactured goods. The conflict resulted in most British warfare being conducted overseas, reducing the devastating effects of territorial conquest that affected much of Europe. This was further aided by Britain's geographical position— an island separated from the rest of mainland Europe.
Another theory is that Britain was able to succeed in the Industrial Revolution due to the availability of key resources it possessed. It had a dense population for its small geographical size. Enclosure of common land and the related Agricultural Revolution made a supply of this labour readily available. There was also a local coincidence of natural resources in the North of England, the English Midlands, South Wales and the Scottish Lowlands. Local supplies of coal, iron, lead, copper, tin, limestone and water power, resulted in excellent conditions for the development and expansion of industry.
The stable political situation in Britain from around 1688, and British society's greater receptiveness to change (when compared with other European countries) can also be said to be factors favouring the Industrial Revolution.
Protestant work ethic
Another theory is that the British advance was due to the presence of an entrepreneurial class which believed in progress, technology and hard work.1 The existence of this class is often linked to the Protestant work ethic (see Max Weber) and the particular status of dissenting Protestant sects, such as the Quakers, Baptists and Presbyterians that had flourished with the English Civil War. Reinforcement of confidence in the rule of law, which followed establishment of the prototype of constitutional monarchy in Britain in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the emergence of a stable financial market there based on the management of the national debt by the Bank of England, contributed to the capacity for, and interest in, private financial investment in industrial ventures.
Dissenters found themselves barred or discouraged from almost all public offices, as well as education at England's only two Universities at the time, Oxford and Cambridge (although dissenters were still free to study at Scotland's four universities). When the restoration of the monarchy took place and membership in the official Anglican church became mandatory due to the Test Act. They thereupon became active in banking, manufacturing and education. The Unitarians, in particular, were very involved in education, by running Dissenting Academies, where, in contrast to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and schools such as Eton and Harrow, much attention was given to mathematics and the sciences--areas of scholarship vital to the development of manufacturing technologies.
Historians sometimes consider this social factor to be extremely important, along with the nature of the national economies involved. While members of these sects were excluded from certain circles of the government, they were considered fellow Protestants, to a limited extent, by many in the middle class, such as traditional financiers or other businessmen. Given this relative tolerance and the supply of capital, the natural outlet for the more enterprising members of these sects would be to seek new opportunities in the technologies created in the wake of the Scientific revolution of the 17th century.
Lunar Society
The work ethic argument has, on the whole, tended to neglect the fact that several inventors and entrepreneurs were rational free thinkers or "Philosophers" typical of a specific class of British intellectuals in the late 18th century, and were by no means normal church goers or members of religious sects. Examples of these free thinkers were the Lunar Society of Birmingham which flourished from 1765 to 1809. Its members were exceptional in that they were among the very few who were conscious that an industrial revolution was then taking place in Britain. They actively worked as a group to encourage it, not least by investing in it and conducting scientific experiments which led to innovative products such as the invention of commercial gas lighting and turning the steam engine into the powerplant of the Industrial era.
Innovations
The invention of the steam engine was the most important innovation of the Industrial Revolution, James Watt, later to be a member of the Lunar Society, developed the idea of using steam to power machines into a practicality thus enabling rapid development of efficient semi-automated factories on a previously unimaginable scale. This was applied to all aspects of industry and engineering. Earlier improvements in iron smelting and metal working based on the use of coke rather than charcoal allowed Watt and others before him to exploit the possibilities of using steam as a form of power. Earlier in the 18th century the textile industry had harnessed water power to drive improved spinning machines and looms. These textile mills became the model for the organisation of human labour in factories, epitomised by Cottonopolis the name given to the vast collection of mills, factories and administration offices based in Manchester.
Besides the innovation of machinery in factories, the assembly line greatly improved efficiency too. With a series of men trained to do a single task on a product, then having it moved along to the next worker, the number of finished goods also rose significantly.
Transmission of innovation
Knowledge of new innovation was spread by several means. Workers who were trained in the technique might move to another employer, or might be poached. A common method was for someone to make a study tour, gathering information where he could. During the whole of the Industrial Revolution and for the century before, all European countries and America engaged in study-touring; some nations, like Sweden and France, even trained civil servants or technicians to undertake it as a matter of state policy. In other countries, notably Britain and America, this practice was carried out by individual manufacturers anxious to improve their own methods. Study tours were common then, as now, as was the keeping of travel diaries. Records made by industrialists and technicians of the period are an incomparable source of information about their methods.
Another means for the spread of innovation was by the network of informal philosophical societies like the Lunar Society of Birmingham, in which members met to discuss science and often its application to manufacturing. Some of these societies published volumes of proceedings and transactions, and the London-based Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce or, more commonly, Society of Arts published an illustrated volume of new inventions, as well as papers about them in its annual Transactions.
There were publications describing technology. Encyclopedias such as Harris's Lexicon technicum (1704) and Dr Abraham Rees's Cyclopaedia (1802-1819) contain much of value. Rees's Cyclopaedia contains an enormous amount of information about the science and technology of the first half of the Industrial Revolution, very well illustrated by fine engravings. Foreign printed sources such as the Descriptions des Arts et Métiers and Diderot's Encyclopédie explained foreign methods with fine engraved plates.
Periodical publications about manufacturing and technology began to appear in the last decade of the 18th century, and a number regularly included notice of the latest patents. Foreign periodicals, such as the Annales des Mines, published accounts of travels made by French engineers who observed British methods on study tours.
Industry
Mining
Coal mining in Britain, particularly in South Wales started early. Before the steam engine, pits were often shallow bell pits following a seam of coal along the surface and being abandoned as the coal was extracted. In other cases, if the geology was favourable, the coal was mined by means of an adit driven into the side of a hill. Shaft mining was done in some areas, but the limiting factor was the problem of removing water. It could be done by hauling buckets of water up the shaft or to a sough, a tunnel driven into a hill to drain a mine. In either case, the water had to be discharged into a stream or ditch at level where it could flow away by gravity. The introduction of the steam engine greatly facilitated the removal of water and enabled shafts to be made deeper, enabling more mineral to be extracted. These were developments that had begun before the Industrial Revolution, but the adoption of James Watt's more efficient steam engine with its separate condenser from the 1770s reduced the fuel costs of engines, making mines more profitable particularly in areas (such as Cornwall), where coal does not occur.
Metallurgy
Reverberatory FurnaceThe major change in the metal industries during the era of the Industrial Revolution was the replacement of organic fuels based on wood with fossil fuel based on coal. Much of this happened somewhat before the Industrial Revolution, based on innovations by Sir Clement Clerke and others from 1678, using coal reverberatory furnaces known as cupolas. These were operated by the flames, which contained carbon monoxide, playing on the ore and reducing the oxide to metal. This has the advantage that impurities (such as sulfur) in the coal do not migrate into the metal. This technology was applied to lead from 1678 and to copper from 1687. It was also applied to iron foundry work in the 1690s, but in this case the reverberatory furnace was known as an air furnace. The foundry cupola is a different (and later) innovation.
This was followed by the first Abraham Darby, who made great strides using coke to fuel his blast furnaces at Coalbrookdale (1709). However the coke pig iron he made was largely only used for the production of cast iron goods such as pots and kettles. In this he had an advantage over his rivals in that his pots, cast by his patented process, were thinner and hence cheaper than those of his rivals. Coke pig iron was hardly used to produce bar iron in forges until the mid 1750s when his son Abraham Darby II built Horsehay and Ketley furnaces (not far from Coalbrookdale). By this time coke pig iron was cheaper than charcoal pig iron.
Throughout this period, bar iron for smiths to forge into consumer goods was still made in finery forges, as it long had been. However, new processes were adopted in the ensuing years. The first is referred to today as potting and stamping, but this was superseded by Henry Cort's puddling process. From 1785, perhaps because the improved version of potting and stamping was about to come out of patent, a great expansion in the output of the British iron industry began. The new processes did not depend on the use of charcoal at all, and were therefore not limited by the speed at which trees grow.
Up to that time, British iron manufacturers had used considerable amounts of imported iron to supplement native supplies. This came principally from Sweden from the mid 17th century and later also from Russia from the end of the 1720s. However, from 1785, imports decreased, leading to Britain becoming an exporter of bar iron as well as manufactured wrought iron consumer goods.
As a result of these developments, the reliance on overseas supplies was diminished. The use of iron and steel in the development of the railways became possible, and (later) improvements in machine tools further boosted the industrial growth of Britain. Following the building of the Iron Bridge in 1778 by Abraham Darby III, iron also became a major structural material.
An improvement was made in the production of steel, which was an expensive commodity and used only where iron would not do, such as for the cutting edge of tools and for springs. Benjamin Huntsman developed his crucible steel technique in the 1740s. The raw material for this was blister steel, made by the cementation process, whose raw material was largely imported Swedish iron.
Chemicals
The large scale production of chemicals was an important development during the Industrial Revolution. The first of these was the production of sulfuric acid by the lead chamber process invented by the Englishman John Roebuck (James Watts first partner) in 1746. He was able to greatly increase the scale of the manufacture by replacing the relatively expensive glass vessels formerly used with larger, less expensive chambers made of riveted sheets of lead. Instead of a few pounds at a time, he was able to make a hundred pounds or so at a time in each of the chambers.
The production of an alkali on a large scale became an important goal as well, and a Frenchman, Nicolas Leblanc, succeeded in 1791 in introducing a method for the production of sodium carbonate. The Leblanc process was done by reacting sulfuric acid to sodium chloride to give sodium sulfate and hydrochloric acid. The sodium sulfate was heated with limestone (calcium carbonate) and coal to give a mixture of sodium carbonate and calcium sulfide. Addition of it to water separated the soluble sodium carbonate from the calcium sulfide. The process produced a large amount of pollution (the hydrochloric acid was initially vented to the air, and calcium sulfide was a useless waste product) but proved economical over the previous method of deriving it from wood ashes, barilla, or kelp.
These two chemicals were very important in that they enabled the introduction of a host of other inventions, replacing many small-scale operations with more cost-effective and controllable processes. Sodium carbonate saw many uses in the glass, textile, soap, and paper industries. Early uses for sulfuric acid included pickling (removing rust) iron and steel, and as a bleach for cloth.
The development of bleaching powder (calcium hypochlorite) by Scottish chemist Charles Tennant in about 1800, based on the discoveries of French chemist Claude Louis Berthollet, revolutionized the bleaching processes in the textile industry by dramatically reducing the time required (from months to days) for the traditional process then in use, which required repeated exposure to the sun in bleach fields after soaking the textiles with alkali or sour milk. Tennant's factory at St. Rollox, North Glasgow became the largest chemical plant in the world at that time.
Steam power
Newcomen's atmospheric steam engineThe development of the stationary steam engine was an essential early element of the Industrial Revolution, however it should be remembered that for most of the period of the Industrial Revolution the majority of industries still relied on wind and water power as well as horse and man-power for driving small machines.
The industrial use of steam power started with Thomas Savery in 1698. He constructed and patented in London the first engine, which he called the "Miner's Friend" as he intended it to pump water from mines. This machine used steam at 8 to 10 atmospheres and didn't use a piston and cylinder but applied the steam pressure directly on to the surface of water in a cylinder to force it along an outlet pipe. It also used condensed steam to produce a partial vacuum to suck water into the cylinder. It generated about one horsepower (hp). It was used as a low-lift water pump in a few mines and a number of water works, but was not a success, being limited in the height it could raise water and was prone to boiler explosions.
The first successful machine was the atmospheric engine, a low performance steam engine invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712. Newcomen apparently conceived his machine quite independently of Savery. His engines used a piston and cylinder, and operated with steam just above atmospheric pressure which was used to produce a partial vacuum in the cylinder when condensed by jets of cold water. The vacuum sucked a piston into the cylinder which moved under pressure from the atmosphere. The engine produced a succession of power strokes which could work a pump, but could not drive a rotating wheel. They were successfully put to use for pumping out mines in Britain, with the engine on the surface working a pump at the bottom of the mine by a long connecting rod. These were large machines, requiring a lot of capital to build, but produced about 5 hp. They were inefficient but when located where coal was cheap at pit heads they were usefully employed in pumping water from mines. They opened up a great expansion in coal mining by allowing mines to go deeper. Despite being fuel hungry, Newcomen engines continued to be used in the coalfields until the early decades of the nineteenth century as they were reliable and easy to maintain.
By 1729, when Newcomen died, his engines had spread to France, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Sweden. A total of 110 are known to have been built by 1733 when the patent expired of which 14 were abroad. According to Rolt and Allen, p 145, (see below) a grand total of 1454 engines had been built by 1800.
Its working was fundamentally unchanged until James Watt succeeded in 1769 in making his Watt steam engine which incorporated a series of improvements, especially the separate steam condenser chamber. This improved engine efficiency by about a factor of five saving 75% on coal costs. The Watt steam engine's ability to drive rotary machinery also meant it could be used to drive a factory or mill directly. They were commercially very successful and by 1800 the firm Boulton & Watt had constructed 496 engines, with 164 acting as pumps, 24 serving blast furnaces, and 308 to power mill machinery. Most of the engines generated between 5 to 10 horsepower.
The development of machine tools such as the lathe, planing and shaping machines powered by these engines, enabled all the metal parts of the engines to be easily and accurately cut and in turn made it possible to build larger and more powerful engines.
Until about 1800, the most common pattern of steam engine was the beam engine, which was built within a stone or brick engine-house but around that time various patterns of portable (i.e. readily removable engines, but not on wheels) were developed, such as the table engine.
Richard Trevithick, a Cornish blacksmith, began to use high pressure steam with improved boilers in 1799. This allowed engines to be compact enough to be used on mobile road and rail locomotives and steam boats.
The further development of the steam engine in the early 19th century after the expiration of Watt's patent saw many improvements by a host of inventors and engineers.
Textile manufacture
Model of the spinning jenny in a museum in Wuppertal, Germany. The spinning jenny was one of the innovations that started the revolution.In the early 18th century, British textile manufacture was based on wool which was processed by individual artisans, doing the spinning and weaving on their own premises. This system is called a cottage industry. Flax and cotton were also used for fine materials, but the processing was difficult because of the pre-processing needed, and thus goods in these materials made only a small proportion of the output.
Use of the spinning wheel and hand loom restricted the production capacity of the industry, but a number of incremental advances increased productivity to the extent that manufactured cotton goods became the dominant British export by the early decades of the 19th century. India was displaced as the premier supplier of cotton goods.
Lewis Paul and John Wyatt, of Birmingham, patented the Roller Spinning machine and the flyer-and-bobbin system, for drawing Wool to a more even thickness, later Paul and Wyatt opened a mill in Birmingham which used their new rolling machine powered by the humble Donkey. In 1743 a factory was opened in Northampton, fifty spindles turned on five of Paul and Wyatt's machines proving more successful than their first Mill this operated until 1764. Lewis Paul also invented the hand driven carding machine. Using two sets of rollers that travelled at different speeds this was later to be used in the first Cotton spinning Mill, Lewis's invention was later developed and improved by Richard Arkwright and Samuel Crompton, although this came about under great suspicion after a fire at Daniel Bourn's factory in Leominster which specifically used Paul and Wyatt's spindles. Borne produced a similar patent in the same year. Step by step, other inventors increased the efficiency of the individual steps of spinning (carding, twisting and spinning, and subsequently rolling) so that the supply of yarn fed a weaving industry that itself was advancing with improvements to shuttles and the loom or 'frame'. The output of an individual labourer increased dramatically, with the effect that these new machines were seen as a threat to employment, and early innovators were attacked and their inventions were destroyed. The inventors often failed to exploit their inventions, and fell on hard times.
To capitalize upon these advances it took a class of entrepreneurs, of which the most famous is Richard Arkwright. He is credited with a list of inventions, but these were actually developed by people such as Thomas Highs and John Kay; Arkwright nurtured the inventors, patented the ideas, financed the initiatives, and protected the machines. He created the cotton mill which brought the production processes together in a factory, and he developed the use of power – first horse power, then water power and finally steam power – which made cotton manufacture a mechanized industry.
Factories
Over London by Rail Gustave Doré c 1870. Shows the densely populated and polluted environments created in the new industrial citiesIndustrialisation also led to the creation of the factory. John Lombe's water-powered silk mill at Derby was operational by 1721. In 1746, an integrated brass mill was working at Warmley near Bristol. Raw material went in at one end, was smelted into brass, and was turned into pans, pins, wire, and other goods. Housing was provided for workers on-site.
Josiah Wedgwood and Matthew Boulton were other prominent early industrialists.
The factory system was largely responsible for the rise of the modern city, as workers migrated into the cities in search of employment in the factories. Nowhere was this better illustrated than the mills and associated industries of Manchester, nicknamed Cottonopolis, and arguably the world's first industrial city. For much of the 19th century, production was done in small mills, which were typically powered by water and built to serve local needs.
The transition to industrialisation was not wholly smooth. For example, a group of English workers known as Luddites formed to protest against industrialisation and sometimes sabotaged factories.
One of the earliest reformers of factory conditions was Robert Owen.
Machine tools
The Industrial Revolution could not have developed without machine tools, for they enabled manufacturing machines to be made. They have their origins in the tools developed in the 18th century by makers of clocks and watches, and scientific instrument makers to enable them to batch-produce small mechanisms. The mechanical parts of early textile machines were sometimes called 'clock work' due to the metal spindles and gears they incorporated. The manufacture of textile machines drew craftsmen from these trades and is the origin of the modern engineering industry. Machine makers early developed special purpose machines for making parts.
Machines were built by various craftsmen--carpenters made wooden framings, and smiths and turners made metal parts. A good example of how machine tools changed manufacturing took place in Birmingham, England in 1830. The invention of a new machine by William Joseph Gillott, William Mitchell and James Stephen Perry allowed mass manufacture of robust, cheap steel pen nibs, up until this point the process was laborious and expensive. Because of the difficulty of manipulating metal, and the lack of machine tools, the use of metal was kept to a minimum. Wood framing had the disadvantage of changing dimensions with temperature and humidity, and the various joints tended to rack (work loose) over time. As the Industrial Revolution progressed, machines with metal frames became more common, but required machine tools to make them economically. Before the advent of machine tools metal was worked manually using the basic hand tools of hammers, files, scrapers, saws and chisels. Small metal parts were readily made by this means, but for large machine parts, such as castings for a lathe bed, where components had to slide together, the production of flat surfaces by means of the hammer and chisel followed by filing, scraping and perhaps grinding with emery paste, was very laborious and costly.
Apart from workshop lathes used by craftsmen, the first large machine tool was the cylinder boring machine, used for boring the large-diameter cylinders on early steam engines. They were to be found at all steam-engine manufacturers. The planing machine, the slotting machine and the shaping machine were developed in the first decades of the 19th century. Although the milling machine was invented at this time, it was not developed as a serious workshop tool until during the Second Industrial Revolution.
Military production had a hand in the development of machine tools. Henry Maudslay, who trained a school of machine tool makers early in the 19th century, was employed at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, as a young man where he would have seen the large horse-driven wooden machines for cannon boring made and worked by the Verbruggans. He later worked for Joseph Bramah on the production of metal locks, and soon after he began working on his own he was engaged to build the machinery for making ships' pulley blocks for the Royal Navy in the Portsmouth Block Mills. These were all metal, and the first machines for mass production and making components with a degree of interchangeability. The lessons Maudslay learned about the need for stability and precision he adapted to the development of machine tools, and in his workshops he trained a generation of men to build on his work, such as Richard Roberts, Joseph Clement and Joseph Whitworth.
Maudslay made his name for his lathes and precision measurement. James Fox of Derby had a healthy export trade in machine tools for the first third of the century, as did Matthew Murray of Leeds. Roberts made his name as a maker of high-quality machine tools, and as a pioneer of the use of jigs and gauges for precision workshop measurement.
Transportation
At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, inland transport was by navigable rivers and roads, with coastal vessels employed to move heavy goods by sea. Railways or wagon ways were used for conveying coal to rivers for further shipment, but canals had not yet been constructed. Animals supplied all of the motive power on land, with sails providing the motive power on the sea.
Navigable rivers
All the major rivers were made navigable to a greater or lesser degree. The Severn in particular was used for the movement of goods to the Midlands which had been imported into Bristol from abroad, and the export of goods from centres of production in Shropshire such as iron goods from Coalbrookdale. Transport was by way of Trows - small sailing vessels which could pass the various shallows and bridges in the river. These could navigate the Bristol Channel to the South Wales ports and Somerset ports, such as Bridgwater and even as far as France. Britain’s transport was improving which meant that the raw materials came quicker and cheaper and allowed the new ideas to spread quickly.
Coastal sail
Sailing vessels had long been used for moving goods round the British coast. The trade transporting coal to London from Newcastle had begun in medieval times. The major international seaports such as London, Bristol and Liverpool were the means by which raw materials such as cotton might be imported and finished goods exported. Transporting goods onwards within Britain by sea was common during the whole of the Industrial Revolution and only fell away with the growth of the railways at the end of the period.
Canals
History of the British canal system
Canals began to be built in the late eighteenth century to link the major manufacturing centres in the Midlands and north with seaports and with London, at that time the largest manufacturing centre in the country. Canals were the first technology to allow bulk materials to be easily transported across country. A single canal horse could pull a load dozens of times larger than a cart at a faster pace. By the 1820s, a national network was in existence. Canal construction served as a model for the organisation and methods later used to construct the railways. They were eventually largely superseded as profitable commercial enterprises by the spread of the railways from the 1840s on.
Britain's canal network, together with its surviving mill buildings, is one of the most enduring features of the early Industrial Revolution to be seen in Britain.
Roads
Much of the original British road system was poorly maintained by thousands of local parishes, but from the 1720s (and occasionally earlier) turnpike trusts were set up to charge tolls and maintain some roads. Increasing numbers of main roads were turnpiked from the 1750s to the extent that almost every main road in England and Wales was the responsibility of some turnpike trust. New engineered roads were built by John Metcalf, Thomas Telford and John Macadam. The major turnpikes radiated from London and were the means by which the Royal Mail was able to reach the rest of the country. Heavy goods transport on these roads was by means of slow broad wheeled carts hauled by teams of horses. Lighter goods were conveyed by smaller carts or by teams of pack horses. Stage coaches transported rich people. The less wealthy walked or paid to ride on a carriers cart.
Railways
Wagonways for moving coal in the mining areas had started in the 17th century, and were often associated with canal or river systems for the further movement of coal. These were all horse drawn or relied on gravity, with a stationary steam engine to haul the wagons back to the top of the incline. The first applications of the steam locomotive were on waggon or plate ways (as they were then often called from the cast iron plates used). Horse-drawn public railways did not begin until the early years of the 19th century. Steam-hauled public railways began with the Liverpool and Manchester and Stockton and Darlington Railways of the late 1820s. The construction of major railways connecting the larger cities and towns began in the 1830s but only gained momentum at the very end of the first Industrial Revolution.
After many of the workers had completed the railways, they did not return to their rural lifestyles, but instead remained in the cities, providing additional workers for the factories.
Railways helped Britain's trade enormously, as they provided a quick, easy method of transport.
Social effects
In terms of social structure, the Industrial Revolution witnessed the triumph of a middle class of industrialists and businessmen over a landed class of nobility & gentry.
Ordinary working people found increased opportunities for employment in the new mills and factories but these were often under strict working conditions with long hours of labour dominated by a pace set by machines. Harsh working conditions were prevalent long before the industrial revolution took place as well. Pre-industrial society was very static and often cruel-child labor, dirty living conditions and long working hours were just as prevalent before the Industrial Revolution.
Child labour
Child labour existed before the Industrial Revolution, and in fact dates back to prehistoric times.
The Industrial Revolution led to a population increase. Industial workers were better paid than those in agriculture. With more money, women ate better, had healthier babies who were themselves better fed. Death rates declined and the distribution of age in the population became more youthful. There was limited opprtunity for education and children were expected to work. Employers also liked the fact they could pay a child less than an adult.
Politicians tried to limit child labour by law. Factory owners resisted; some felt that they were aiding the poor by giving their children money to buy food to avoid starvation, and others simply welcomed the cheap labour. In 1833, the first law against child labour, the Factory Act of 1833, was passed in England: Children younger than nine were not allowed to work, children were not permitted to work at night and the work day of youth under the age of 18 was limited to twelve hours. Factory inspectors supervised the execution of this law. About ten years later, the employment of children and women in mining was forbidden. These laws decreased the number of child labourers; however child labour remained in Europe up to the 20th century.
Housing
Living Conditions during the Industrial Revolution varied from the splendour of the homes of the owners to the squalor of the lives of the workers. Cliffe Castle, Keighley, is a good example of how the newly rich chose to live. This is a large home modelled loosely on a castle, towers and garden walls. The home is very large and was surrounded by a massive garden, the estate itself stretching for a number of miles. Cliffe Castle is now open to the public as a museum. Poor people lived in small houses in cramped streets. These homes would share toilet facilities, have open sewers and would be at risk of damp. Conditions did improve during the 19th century as a number of public health acts were introduced covering things such as sewage, hygiene and making some boundaries upon the construction of homes. Not everybody lived in homes like these. The Industrial Revolution led to there being a larger middle class of professionals such as lawyers and doctors. The conditions for the poor improved over the course of the 19th century due to a number of government and local plans which led to cities becoming cleaner places. life hadn't been brilliant for the poor before industrialisation.
Luddites
The rapid industrialisation of the English economy cost many craft workers their jobs. The textile industry in particular industrialized early, and many weavers found themselves suddenly unemployed since they could no longer compete with machines which only required relatively limited (and unskilled) labour to produce more cloth than a single weaver. Many such unemployed workers, weavers and others, turned their animosity towards the machines that had taken their jobs and began destroying factories and machinery. These attackers became known as Luddites, supposedly followers of Ned Ludd, a folklore figure. The first attacks of the Luddite movement began in 1811. The Luddites rapidly gained popularity, and the British government had to take drastic measures to protect industry.
Organization of Labour
Conditions for the working class had been bad for millennia. The Industrial Revolution, however, concentrated labour into mills, factories and mines and this facilitated the organisation of trade unions to help advance the interests of working people. The power of a union could demand better terms by withdrawing all labour and cause a consequent cessation of production. Employers had to decide between giving in to the union demands at a cost to themselves or suffer the cost of the lost production. Skilled workers were hard to replace and these were the first groups to successfully advance their conditions through this kind of bargaining.
The main method the unions used to effect change was strike action. Strikes were painful events for both sides, the unions and the management. The management was upset because strikes took their precious working force away for a large period of time, and the unions had to deal with riot police and various middle class prejudices that striking workers were the same as criminals, as well as loss of income. The strikes often led to violent and bloody clashes between police and workers. Factory managers usually reluctantly gave in to various demands made by strikers, but the conflict was generally long standing.
In England, the Combination Act forbade workers to form any kind of trade union from 1799 until its repeal in 1824. Even after this, unions were still severely restricted.
In 1842, a General Strike involving cotton workers and colliers and organised through the Chartist movement stopped production across Great Britain. .
Other effects
World GDP/capita changed very little for most of human history before the industrial revolution.
Roughly exponential increase in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, driven by increasing energy demands since the Industrial RevolutionThe application of steam power to the industrial processes of printing supported a massive expansion of newspaper and popular book publishing, which reinforced rising literacy and demands for mass political participation.
During the Industrial Revolution the life expectancy of children increased dramatically. The percentage of the children born in London which died before the age of five decreased from 74.5% in 1730 - 1749 to 31.8% in 1810 - 1829. Besides, there was a significant increase in worker wages during the period 1813-1913.
The Industrial Revolution had significant impacts on the structure of society. Prior to its rise, the public and private spheres held strong overlaps; work was often conducted through the home, and thus was shared in many cases by both a wife and her husband. However, during this period the two began to separate, with work and home life considered quite distinct from one another. This shift made it necessary for one partner to maintain the home and care for children. Women, holding the distinction of being able to breastfeed, thus more often maintained the home, with men making up a sizeable fraction of the workforce. With much of the family income coming from men, then, their power in relation to women increased further, with the latter often dependent on men's income.[citation needed]This had enormous impacts on the defining of gender roles and was effectively the model for what was later termed the traditional family.
However, the need for a large workforce and resulting wages also enticed many women into industrial work, where they were often paid much less in relation to men. This was in large part due to a lack of organised labour among women to push for benefits and wage increases, and in part to ensure women's continued dependence on a man's income to survive.
Intellectual paradigms
Capitalist
The advent of The Enlightenment provided an intellectual framework which welcomed the practical application of the growing body of scientific knowledge — a factor evidenced in the systematic development of the steam engine, guided by scientific analysis, and the development of the political and sociological analyses, culminating in Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. One of the main arguments for capitalism is that industrialisation have increased wealth for all, as evidenced by raising life expectancy, reduced working hours, and no work for children and the elderly.
Criticism --- Marxism
According to Karl Marx, industrialisation polarised society into the bourgeoisie (those who own the means of production, e.g., the factories and land) and the much larger proletariat (the working class who actually perform the labour necessary to extract something valuable from the means of production). He saw the industrialisation process as the logical dialectical progression of feudal economic modes, necessary for the full development of capitalism, which he saw as in itself a necessary precursor to the development of socialism and eventually communism.
Romantic Movement
Concurrent with the Industrial Revolution there developed an intellectual and artistic hostility towards the new industrialisation known as the Romantic Movement. Its major exponents included the artist and poet William Blake, and poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats and Shelley. The movement stressed the importance of "nature" in art and language, in contrast to the 'monstrous' machines and factories. In Blake's words they were the, "Dark satanic mills" of his poem And did those feet in ancient time.
The Second Industrial Revolution
The insatiable demand of the railways for more durable rail led to the development of the means to cheaply mass-produce steel. Steel is often cited as the first of several new areas for industrial mass-production, which are said to characterize a "Second Industrial Revolution", beginning around 1850. This "second" Industrial Revolution gradually grew to include the chemical industries, petroleum refining and distribution, electrical industries, and, in the twentieth century, the automotive industries, and was marked by a transition of technological leadership from Britain to the United States and Germany.
The introduction of hydroelectric power generation in the Alps enabled the rapid industrialisation of coal-starved northern Italy, beginning in the 1890s. The increasing availability of economical petroleum products also reduced the importance of coal and further widened the potential for industrialisation.
By the 1890s, industrialisation in these areas had created the first giant industrial corporations with burgeoning global interests, as companies like U.S. Steel, General Electric, and Bayer AG joined the railroad companies on the world's stock markets.
19th century
Steam-powered transportation by railway, pioneered notably by Richard Trevithick. The Portsmouth Block Mills was where manufacture of ships' pulley blocks by all-metal machines first took place and instigated the age of mass production. Machine tools used by enginers to manufacture other machines began in the first decade of the century, notably by Richard Roberts and Joseph Whitworth. Steamships were eventually completely iron-clad, and played a role in the opening of Japan and China to trade with the West. Mechanical computing was envisioned by Charles Babbage but did not come to fruition.
20th century
Radio, and possibilities in Radar. It is possible that electronic computing would have developed as rapidly without the wars of the twentieth century. Nuclear power, developed after the Manhattan project, is another important but controversial technology. Transport by rocketry: most work occurred in the U.S. (Goddard), Russia (Tsiolkovsky) and Germany (Oberth).
Recombinant DNA.
Measuring technological progress
Many sociologists and anthropologists have created social theories dealing with social and cultural evolution. Some, like Lewis H. Morgan, Leslie White, and Gerhard Lenski, declare technological progress to be the primary factor driving the development of human civilisation.
Morgan's concept of three major stages of social evoluton (savagery, barbarism, and civilization) can be divided by technological milestones, like fire, the bow, and pottery in the savage era, domestication of animals, agriculture, and metalworking in the barbarian era and the alphabet and writing in the civilisation era.
Instead of specific inventions, White decided that the measure by which to judge the evolution of culture was energy. For White "the primary function of culture" is to "harness and control energy." White differentiates between five stages of human development: In the first, people use energy of their own muscles. In the second, they use energy of domesticated animals. In the third, they use the energy of plants (agricultural revolution). In the fourth, they learn to use the energy of natural resources: coal, oil, gas. In the fifth, they harness nuclear energy.
White introduced a forumula P=E*T, where E is a measure of energy consumed, and T is the measure of efficiency of technical factors utilising the energy. In his own words, "culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is increased, or as the efficiency of the instrumental means of putting the energy to work is increased". Russian astronomer, Nikolai Kardashev, extrapolated his theory creating the Kardashev scale, which categorizes the energy use of advanced civilisations.
Lenski takes a more modern approach and focuses on information. The more information and knowledge (especially allowing the shaping of natural environment) a given society has, the more advanced it is. He identifies four stages of human development, based on advances in the history of communication. In the first stage, information is passed by genes. In the second, when humans gain sentience, they can learn and pass information through by experience. In the third, the humans start using signs and develop logic. In the fourth, they can create symbols, develop language and writing. Advancements in the technology of communication translates into advancements in the economic system and political system, distribution of goods, social inequality and other spheres of social life. He also differentiates societies based on their level of technology, communication and economy: 1) hunters and gatherers, 2) simple agricultural, 3) advanced agricultural, 4) industrial 5) special (like fishing societies).
Finally, from the late 1970s sociologists and anthropologists like Alvin Toffler (author of Future Shock), Daniel Bell and John Naisbitt have approached the theories of post-industrial societies, arguing that the current era of industrial society is coming to an end, and services and information are becoming more important than industry and goods. Some of the more extreme visions of the post-industrial society, especially in fiction, are strikingly similar to the visions of near and post-Singularity societies.
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History of scientific technology
History of telescopes
Timeline of telescopes, observatories, and observing technology
Timeline of microscope technology
Timeline of particle physics technology
Timeline of low-temperature technology
Timeline of temperature and pressure measurement technology
Timeline of motor and engine technology
Timeline of photography technology
Timeline of rocket and missile technology
Timeline of communication technology
Best of luck in your quest for technology and how it has revolutionized our planet.
J.F.