The Industrial Revolution
Through the second half of the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution transformed manufacturing in Great Britain and across continental Europe, the United States, and the rest of the developed world.
The transition saw machines replace hand production methods, new manufacturing techniques and processes, an increasing use of water and steam power and the rise of mechanised factories, which replaced smaller artisan workshops.
Several factors contributed to an extended period of unprecedented technological and socio-economic change:
- Britain was politically stable, with a legal system that supported business, financial capital to invest and a pool of would-be entrepreneurs with managerial skills;
- High levels of agricultural productivity in the wake of the Agrarian Revolution provided a relative abundance of food and an excess of unemployed human resources;
- Existing ports, canals and rivers were able to move raw materials and outputs cheaply;
- The British Isles had an abundance of mineral resources, including iron, tin and copper, along with coal and water resources to power the works that processed them;
Revolutionary technological changes included:
- The widespread use of iron and steel to supplement more traditional materials in construction and manufactured goods;
- The introduction of new energy sources, including the steam engine, electricity, petroleum, and the internal-combustion engine, to supplement and/or replace older fuels and sources of motive power;
- The invention and widespread adoption of new machines that increased productivity while simultaneously reducing the expenditure of human energy in manufacturing processes (e.g. the spinning jenny and the power loom);
- A significant reorganisation of production systems that replaced cottage industries and individual workshops with factories with a divided labour force: individual workers operated one section of the manufacturing process;
- Developments in transportation and communication that moved people, material and information in larger quantities and faster speeds than had previously been possible (e.g. steam locomotive, steamship, automobile, aircraft, the electric telegraph, and radio signals;
- An increasing application of scientific research created more efficient manufacturing processes.
The Industrial Revolution began with mechanised spinning in the British textile industry in the 1780s. After mechanised gins removed the seeds from raw cotton, water or steam-powered spinning machines vastly increased the output of textile workers as power looms produced large quantities of cheaply woven cotton cloth.
Similar gains in productivity occurred in the manufacture of linen and woollen goods.
