Industrial Revolution in Britain

• The Industrial Revolution started in England and spread to other countries.
• The changes that began in Britain paved the way for modern industrial societies.
• The Industrial Revolution refers to the greatly increased output of machine-made goods that began in England in the mid-1700s.
• Before the Industrial Revolution, people wove textiles by hand, later machines began to do this and other jobs.
• The Industrial Revolution spread from England to Continental Europe and North America.

Industrial Revolution Begins in Britain

• In 1700, small farms covered England's landscape.
• Wealthy landowners began buying up much of the land that village farmers had once worked and dramatically improved farming methods.
• These innovations amounted to an agricultural revolution.
• Wealthy landowners enclosed their land with fences or hedges to cultivate larger fields, which are called enclosures.
• Landowners experimented with more productive seeding and harvesting methods to boost crop yields.
• The enclosure movement had two important results: landowners tried new agricultural methods, and large landowners forced small farmers to become tenant farmers or move to the cities.
• Jethro Tull invented the seed drill in about 1701, allowing farmers to sow seeds in well-spaced rows at specific depths, boosting crop yields.
• Crop rotation was developed by scientific farmers, where farmers might plant a field with wheat one year, and the next year plant a root crop, such as turnips, to restore nutrients.

Why the Industrial Revolution Began in England

• England had extensive natural resources that included water power and coal to fuel the new machines.
• It also had iron ore to construct machines, tools, and buildings, rivers for inland transportation, and harbors from which merchant ships set sail.
• Britain had an expanding economy to support industrialization, and businesspeople invested in the manufacture of new inventions.
• Britain's highly developed banking system also contributed to the country's industrialization, and the availability of bank loans encouraged people to invest in new machinery and expand their operations.
• Britain's political stability gave the country a tremendous advantage over its neighbors.
• Britain had all the factors of production, the resources needed to produce goods and services that the Industrial Revolution required, including land, labor, and capital (or wealth).

Inventions Spur Industrialization

• Inventions now revolutionized Britain's textile industry, which clothed the world in wool, linen, and cotton.
• In 1733, John Kay made a shuttle that sped back and forth on wheels doubling the work a weaver could do in a day.
• Around 1764, James Hargreaves invented a spinning wheel he named after his daughter, his spinning jenny allowed one spinner to work eight threads at a time.
• Richard Arkwright invented the water frame in 1769, using the waterpower from rapid streams to drive spinning wheels.
• In 1779, Samuel Crompton combined features of the spinning jenny and the water frame to produce the spinning mule, which made thread that was stronger, finer, and more consistent than earlier spinning machines.
• Run by waterpower, Edmund Cartwright's power loom sped up weaving after its invention in 1787.
• Wealthy textile merchants set up the machines in large buildings called factories, which needed waterpower, so the first ones were built near rivers and streams.
• In 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, multiplying the amount of cotton that could be cleaned, and American cotton production skyrocketed from 1.5 million pounds in 1790 to 85 million pounds in 1810.

Improvements in Transportation

• The first such development, the steam engine, stemmed from the search for a cheap, convenient source of power.
• In 1765, James Watt figured out a way to make the steam engine work faster and more efficiently while burning less fuel.
• In 1774, Watt joined with Matthew Boulton, an entrepreneur who organizes, manages, and takes on the risks of a business.
• An American inventor named Robert Fulton ordered a steam engine from Boulton and Watt, and he built a steamboat called the Clermont which later ferried passengers up and down New York's Hudson River.
• By the mid-1800s, 4,250 miles of inland channels slashed the cost of transporting both raw materials and finished goods.
• British roads improved thanks to the efforts of John McAdam, who equipped road beds with a layer of large stones for drainage.
• Private investors formed companies that built roads and then operated them for profit.

The Railway Age Begins

• A steam engine on wheels, the railroad locomotive drove English industry after 1820.
• Richard Trevithick hauled ten tons of iron over nearly ten miles of track in a steam-driven locomotive.
• In 1821, George Stephenson began work on the world's first railroad line to run 27 miles from the Yorkshire coal fields to the port of Stockton.
• The Rocket, designed by Stephenson and his son hauled a 13-ton load at more than 24 miles per hour.
• The invention and perfection of the locomotive had at least four major effects: railroads spurred industrial growth by giving manufacturers a cheap way to transport materials and finished products.
• The railroad boom created hundreds of thousands of new jobs for both railroad workers and miners.
• Also, the railroads boosted England's agricultural and fishing industries, which could transport their products to distant cities and encouraged country people to take distant city jobs.

The Industrial Revolution started in England in the mid-1700s, marking a shift to machine-made goods. It began with agricultural innovations as wealthy landowners dramatically improved farming methods. The Industrial Revolution later spread from England to Continental Europe and North America.