HISTORY 1DD3 Lecture 8: First Industrial Revolution & Development of Industrialization
19 Feb 2019
School
Department
Course
Professor
Lecture 8: The First Industrial Revolution and Development of Industrialization
Dr. Stephen Heathorn – Winter 2019
• Technological Progress
o Technological changes of the 18th century didn’t appear suddenly
o 16th to 17th century – the methods of making glass, clocks, and chemicals
advanced
o Technological advance transformed through the production of textiles
o Britain produced wool products and traded them with areas in the world that
produced raw cotton
o Cotton clothing was seen as superior to wool in Europe
o Cotton goods were expensive to produce
o Demand for cotton goods and British access to raw materials spurred
technological changes to increase supply
• Early Inventions
o Early 18th century – took four spinners (who turned he raw material into yarn)
to keep up with one cotton loom
▪ Took 10 people to prepare yarn for one woolen weaver
o 1771 – Richard Arkwright’s “water frame” was producing yarn with the aid of
a water-powered machine
o James Hargreaves patented a “spinning jenny”
▪ One operator could spin many threads simultaneously
o 1779 – Samuel Crompton combined the jenny and the water frame in a
machine known as “Crompton’s Mule”
▪ Could produce large quantities of fine, strong yarn quickly
• The Advent of Textile Mills
o 1780s – British textile manufacture increased largely
o New textile mills (factories) were established at a rapid pace
o Consumed as much cotton and wool as could be shipped to Britain
• Water Power
o Early industrialization in Britain relied on water power
o Wheels that were turned by fast-moving streams, that then produced
mechanical power for machines
o North of England
▪ Steep hills that the water from the wet climate came down in fast
running streams
▪ One of the primary reasons that textile industry was based here
• The Steam Engine
o Steam engine turned the industrialization of textiles into rapid
industrialization of the entire manufacturing economy
o First steam-powered machines were used to pump out water in tin and copper
mines (early 1700s)
o 1763 – James Watt began to make improvements on these early steam pump
engines
▪ Made them more efficient
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