Industrial Revolution

The Threshing Machine In 1796, Scottish mechanical engineer Andrew Meikle invented the THRESHING MACHINE.  It beat and separated the good part of the plant from the part they didn’t want to use. The machine separated the grain from the stalks and husks far more quickly than hand a person could do it.  Just think how long it takes for one person to pull the husk off of a corn cob.  Now imagine doing that for 10,000 pieces of corn on the cob!!! This meant that farmers were able to grow even more food which led to more food supplies than they had before.   Why did this matter?   If they had not been able to grow and harvest more crops with this new invention, then they would not have been able to create other inventions.  This is because people did not have to be in the fields picking corn or cotton.  They could get jobs doing other things, like inventing!   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jSnHoz-5u4

 

The Flying Shuttle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69Iskdg6HN0 For hundreds of years, in order to make cloth…the material used to make clothes, blankets, socks, etc….one person would sit at a loom and weave for hours.  This made cloth very expensive, since one person would work for a week or more to make enough cloth for one shirt!!! In 1733, John Kay invented the FLYING SHUTTLE.  One person could now operate a fabric-making machine and could make many shapes and sizes of cloth. These changes doubled the speed of weaving.

The “Spinning Jenny” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM6T2mb-C6M In 1764, inventor James Hargreaves built a machine that became known as the spinning jenny (or spinning frame). The machine used eight spindles with a single wheel that allowed one person to spin cotton into thread.  This was important, because you couldn’t make cloth without thread!   One person could do as much work as it used to take 100 people to do!! Why is this important?  Because now, they can use those other new inventions to make cloth faster.  Which means that they can make clothing faster.  Which means they can sell more.  And make more money! What kind of jobs can now be created that weren’t there before?  

The Rocket https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4EjlMizMiQ George Stephenson designed and built the Rocket, the first steam locomotive practical for pulling train cars.  It was able to go 24 mph!  The Rocket was very important.  Without this new invention, they wouldn’t have needed as many new railroad tracks…railways! The railroad quickly spread around Europe and made for faster transportation. This created new jobs, forcing people to move into cities. Cities like London, for example, changed a lot.  In 1801, before the Rocket, London had 1,117,000 people. After the invention, however, the population of London had more than doubled to 2,685,000 people in 1851! Why were more people moving into the cities?  What other inventions are causing this to happen??

The Bessemer Steel Process https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzrlIhTF0lo All of these inventions were possible because of the mass production of steel: large suspension bridges, steel frame construction in buildings, longer lasting railroads.  It allowed impurities to be removed cheaply and easily, enabling steel to be produced in mass quantities.

The Telegraph https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mvqlsd3prW8 In 1844, Samuel Morse sent the first successful telegraph message between two cities (Baltimore and Washington, D.C.). The telegraph proved to be a major breakthrough in communications, allowing people to get news far more quickly about events taking place hundreds—or even thousands—of miles away. In 1858, Queen Victoria of England inaugurated the first use of transatlantic cable by sending a 98-word message to President James Buchanan of the United States. How did the telegraph change Europe and the world? The telegraph changed society by making it possible for people to communicate with each other from a distance. The telegraph gave Americans the chance to send and receive messages faster and more often than ever before.   How is the telegraph like the internet?

Cotton Gin In 1793, Eli Whitney invented a simple machine that influenced the history of the United States.  He invented a cotton gin that was popular in the South.  The South became the cotton producing part of the country because Whitney’s cotton gin was able to successfully pull out the seeds from the cotton bolls. It was an important invention because it dramatically reduced the amount of time it took to separate cotton seeds from cotton fiber. https://youtu.be/gzAK65N4ruc

Steam Engine The steam engine was one of the most important technologies of the Industrial Revolution, although steam did not replace water power in importance in Britain until after the Industrial Revolution. From Englishman Thomas Newcomen's atmospheric engine, of 1712, through major developments by Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer James Watt, the steam engine began to be used in many industrial settings, not just in mining, where the first engines had been used to pump water from deep workings. Early mills had run successfully with water power, but by using a steam engine a factory could be located anywhere, not just close to water. Water power varied with the seasons and was not available https://youtu.be/1C64ryvQ0dY