The Industrial Revolution was a period that began in England in the 1700’s when humanity really began to turn to machines to do their work for them.

So, Why England?

Factors of production are anything that is used to produce a good. Britain happened to have all the things you need in order to industrialize.

England was the first nation to industrialize because they had so many industrial resources. Coal for fuel. Iron ore. Inland River system. Urban Population.

For generations Europeans had all used the same land for grazing. Farmers didn’t really own the grazing land, they had just been allowed to use it.

Wealthy landowners began to buy up land and fence it off. These huge tracts of enclosed land became much more efficient at producing food.

The new owners were more willing to experiment with new techniques. Jethro Tull’s seed drill made planting seeds vastly more efficient.

Years of planting only one crop had seriously depleted soil nutrients in many areas. By planting different crops each year farmers were able to maintain better soil.

While European farming had become better, many farmers lost their land. Most were forced to seek new lives in big cities, creating an urban explosion.

Britain had a highly developed banking system in the world at the time. This made it easy for Britons to get loans for new machinery or businesses.

The textiles business was the first to be industrialized in Britain. Through a series of inventions, it became much cheaper and easier to create cloth from wool and cotton.

Most cloth had been woven out of material spun on a wheel Both the spinning and weaving were done by manpower, and both were very slow.

The flying shuttle made the process of weaving much faster Weaving got done so fast, the spinners could not keep up with demand for yarn.

The problem was solved by James Hargreaves in His invention let one spinner spin eight spools of yarn at a time

Hargreaves was able to produce so much yarn that the price fell, angering other spinners. They broke into his house, smashed his machines, and forced him to flee to Nottingham.

The water frame harnessed the power of fast rivers to replace human muscle power. When hooked to a spinning jenny, yarn could be made much more efficiently.

Power loom was a water powered weaving machine. The loom was very large, and had to be kept in a factory.

Fortunately as the population moved from the farms to cities, new jobs in factories appeared. Dependence on water power meant that most early factories had to be on rivers.

Eli Whitney was an early American inventor. His inventions had an enormous impact on the industrial revolution and the development of the United States.

Britain relied on American cotton which was very labor intensive. The cotton gin separated out the seeds from cotton much faster than by hand.

The cotton gin did not make picking the cotton any easier, and did increase demand for cotton. As a result, slavery became more profitable than ever in the American South.